Z 663 
.A87 
1983 











ARTISTS FOR VICTORY 
















































•HT> 



ARTISTS 

FOR 

VICTORY 

An Exhibition Catalog 
by Ellen G. Landau 


Library of Congress Washington 1983 









Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data 

Main entry under title: 

Artists for victory. 

Bibliography: p. 

Supt. of Docs, no.: LC 1.12/2:Ar7 
1. Prints, American—Exhibitions. 2. Prints—20th 
century'—United States—Exhibitions. 3. World War, 
1939-1945, in an—Exhibitions. 4. Artists for Victory', 
Inc.—Exhibitions. I. Landau, Ellen G. II. Library of 
Congress. 

NE508.A77 1983 769’.4’99405373 83-600117 

ISBN 0-8444-0432-2 


Cover: War Bulletins, by Leo John Meissner (see p. 79). 

Title Page: Detail from Labor in a Diesel Plant, by Letterio Calapai (see p. 25). 


Copyright® 1983 by Ellen G. Landau 


Note: 

All works illustrated in this catalog are from the collections of the Library’ of 
Congress. Measurements given in captions are in centimeters, and height pre¬ 
cedes width. Many of the prints are not dated, either in pencil or on the plate. 
The majority were done in 1942 or 1943, specifically for the “America in the 
War” exhibition. 


li 


Catalog for an exhibition at 
the Library of Congress 

Washington, D.C. 

February 2-July 31, 1983 


Also exhibited by: 

THE CENTRAL INTELLIGENCE 
AGENCY FINE ARTS COMMISSION 
McLean, Virginia 
August 7-September 4, 1983 

THE U.S. ARMY AIR DEFENSE 

MUSEUM 

Fort Bliss, Texas 

September 25-October 23, 1983 

MATHER GALLERY 

CASE WESTERN RESERVE UNIVERSITY 
Cleveland, Ohio 

November 1-December 11, 1983 

THE LYNDON BAINES JOHNSON 
LIBRARY AND MUSEUM 
Austin, Texas 

February 19-March 18, 1984 

THE PRESIDENTIAL MUSEUM 
Odessa, Texas 
April 8-May 6, 1984 


Contents 


Acknowledgments iv 

America in the War 1 

The Artists and Their Works 9 

Appendix 1 129 

‘America in the War” Exhibition 
List of Prizewinners 

Appendix 2 130 

Museums and Galleries Which 
Showed "America in the War” 


Acknowledgments 


I would especially like to acknowledge the use of the following sources 
in preparing the essay “America in the War” and artists’ biographies: the 
Artists for Victory “Bulletin to Members” series, which appeared in Art 
Newsixom September 1944 to January 1947; the minutes of board, execu¬ 
tive committee, and general membership meetings of the Artists for Vic¬ 
tory organization—a gift of Helen Treadwell, in 1965, to the Archives of 
American An, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, D.C.—the papers of 
Forbes Watson, Samuel Golden, and Charles Keller, also in the Archives 
of American Art; and the papers of Albert M. Reese, in the archives, and 
Reese’s book, American Prize Prints of the Twentieth Century (New 
York: American Artist’s Group, 1949). Many of the artists involved in 
“America in the War” wrote to Golden and Reese concerning their 
careers and, in some cases, discussed the particular prints actually in the 
“America in the War” show. 

I would like to thank the following artists from “America in the War” 
for their generous cooperation in answering my questions about their 
participation in the show: Will Barnet, Riva Helfond Barrett, Fiske Boyd, 
Letterio Calapai, Minna Citron, Richard Floethe, Robert Gwathmey, Hans 


Jelinek, Misch Kohn, Alicia Legg, J. Jay McVicker, Jack Markow, Seymour 
Nydorf, Phil Paradise, Dorothy Rutka Kennon Porter, Leonard Pvtlak, 
Charles F. Quest, Karl Schrag, Henry Simon, Burr Singer, Raphael Soyer, 
Prentiss Taylor, Joseph Trovato, Sylvia Wald, Charles Banks Wilson, and 
Lumen Martin Winter. I would like to extend special thanks to Hilda 
Katz, for sending me an original copy of the prospectus for the exhibi¬ 
tion, and to Isabel Bishop, Evelyn Lazzari, and Eleanor Patrick Melugin 
for providing information on Gladys Mock, Pietro Lazzari, and James H. 
Patrick, respectively. Libraries and museums all over the country, too 
numerous to mention by name, helped with clippings and biographical 
data on the artists. 

Finally, I would like to thank Henry Simon for providing a new 
impression of The Three Horsemen, and the National Museum of Ameri¬ 
can Art, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, D C., for lending Louis 
Lozowick’s Granaries of Democracy, as well as Karen Beall, of the Prints 
and Photographs Division of the Library of Congress, for her help and 
advice. 

Ellen G. Landau 

Case Western Reserve University 



Artists for Victory 




America in the War 


The worst military disaster in the history of the United States, the 
bombing of Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941, shocked this nation into 
sudden, all-out mobilization for a war to protect the American way of 
life. Overnight, the entire country became war-minded, and people in 
all walks of life began to ask what they could do to help defeat the Axis 
powers. Every resource this nation could muster was desperately 
needed. Among those who immediately answered the call to action 
were artists. 

One of the primary concerns of the previous decade had been the 
social utility of art. During the depression, the government-sponsored 
Works Progress Administration (W.P.A.) Fine Arts Projects had empha¬ 
sized the utilitarian. The style known as “Social Realism,” so prominent 
in the 1930s, dictated that the artist put his conscience to work, using art 
as a means of communicating important ideas, rather than dwelling on 
purely formal problems. 

This humanistic approach was given further credence by the great 
master of the School of Paris, Pablo Picasso, when in 1937 he painted 
Guernica. This painting, the artist’s response to the total annihilation of 
a town’s innocent population in the Spanish Civil War, revalidated con¬ 
tent and made contemporary the age-old phenomenon of war as a stim¬ 
ulus for creativity. 

Not only has war been one of the principal occupations of civilized 
human beings but it has been an incentive for aesthetic activity from a 
time before recorded history. Mesolithic rock paintings found in the 
Sahara desert, the first to show human figures, depict scenes of belliger¬ 
ence. Early civilizations exalted the military prowess of their rulers, 
which was equated with the triumphs of their gods. Classical vase paint¬ 
ing, sculpture, and epical poetry glorified the valor of war heroes, and 
this exalted approach by artists to war continued more or less constant, 
even into modern times. To cite just a few examples, Louis XIV 1 s 
exploits became the subjects for Grand Style monumental decorative 
cycles by Le Brun; Napoleon was portrayed as a messianic figure by the 
Baron Gros; and the virile nationalistic symbolism of Leutze’s Washing¬ 
ton Crossing the Delaware still stimulates intense patriotic feeling. Most 


of the American artists of the First World War perpetuated this approach 
by emphasizing the pomp, pageantry, flag-waving, and thrill of going off 
to battle or returning home victorious. In December 1942, American 
artist Guy Pene du Bois, writing on the occasion of a New York Gallery 
exhibition of 1915-20 vintage paintings, noted how out-of-spirit the 
romantic illusions of this interpretation of war were, however, with the 
deadly seriousness of the current struggle. 

Artists of the forties felt a closer kinship, for instance, with seventeenth- 
century printmaker Jacques Callot, who had depicted not the glories but 
the miseries of the Thirty" Years’ War. Or with Francisco Goya, whose 
Disasters of War series of 1863 broke with tradition to focus on the per¬ 
sonal implications of war, condemning its cruelty and inhumanity rather 
than lauding it. In addition to Picasso, several other twentieth-century 
European artists, such as Kaethe Kollwitz, George Grosz, and Otto Dix 
presented examples of antiwar sentiment in their works. 

The very’ magnitude of the Second World War, coupled with the fact 
that it was not being fought on American soil, intensified the need for 
American artists to use whatever powers they had at their disposal to 
help clarify' the issues and marshal both the spiritual and the material 
resources of the country. Francis Brennan, chief of the Office of War 
Information, observed that the American people needed their artists to 
express their anger, their grief, their fear, and their greatness more than 
ever in such a perilous time. In the words of printmaker Rockwell Kent, 
American artists of the period had an obligation to be “spokesmen of 
the nation’s will to victory'.” 

Less than two weeks after Pearl Harbor, the Division of Information of 
the Office of Emergency Management issued a bulletin announcing a 
competition for artists to submit defense and war pictures. The Graphics 
Division of the Office of Facts and Figures (which was under the direc¬ 
tion of Archibald MacLeish, simultaneously Librarian of Congress) soon 
also became a sponsor for war-related art projects, as did the W.P.A., 
until its demise, and the U.S. Treasury Department’s Section of Painting 
and Sculpture. 

Inspired by the British example in World War I, the public relations 


1 



departments of the army, navy, and other service branches began to 
commission artists to prepare camouflage, illustrate training manuals, 
design recruiting posters, and make a limited on-the-spot record of the 
war. The works of these armed forces artists—which, by dictate, empha¬ 
sized objective reporting over subjective interpretation—were shown to 
the public in a number of exhibitions at such prestigious museums as 
the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C., the Chicago Art Institute, 
and the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City. In addition to 
Life magazine, which contracted with civilian artists to do war subjects, 
Abbott Laboratories of Chicago, Standard Oil of New Jersey, the Chrysler 
Corporation, and other leading firms in the business community also 
commissioned artists to document preparations for war and defense in 
paintings. 

Many of the artists not associated with such projects began to feel the 
need to mobilize formally themselves. As early as 1940, the Society of 
Illustrators and Writers Guild of New York had formed a National 
Defense Committee to analyze what the artist could do in the event of 
U.S. involvement in the war in Europe. In June 1941, a group of radical 
artists and writers convened a congress in New York in defense of art 
against the threat of Fascism. That year, also, the Museum of Modern Art 
presented an exhibition, “Britain at War,” to demonstrate to American 
artists how their talents could be used for the national good. 

In England, the leading art societies had banded together to form the 
Central Institute of Art and Design to more effectively help their 
government with war-related art projects. Following the British example, 
the National Art Council for Defense and the Artists Societies for 
Defense were formed in late 1941 in New York. Representatives from 
major U.S. art groups of the day joined the organizations, which together 
included members from twenty-one different art societies. Complying 
with the federal government’s request that there be one central organi¬ 
zation of artists during the war, the two merged in January 1942, renam¬ 
ing themselves Artists for Victory, Inc. 

The stated purpose of Artists for Victory was “to render effective the 
talents and abilities of artists in the prosecution of World War II and the 
protection of this country.” Hobart Nichols of the National Academy of 
Design, in accepting the presidency of the new association, commented: 

As I interpret our purpose in forming this organization, it is, first, that 
we are a very large group of loyal American citizens who want to help 
win this war, and secondly, we are a very large group of artists who 
believe that by virtue of our special training and ability we can be use¬ 
ful to that end. 


2 


The artists who united in Artists for Victory did so in the sincere belief 
that their highly developed qualities of imagination and their technical 
abilities could be of service to the U.S. government on both the military 
and home fronts. President Roosevelt agreed. He wrote to Nichols in 
late 1942, “The very name of your organization is symbolic of the 
determination of every man and woman in every activity of life through 
out the nation to enlist in the cause to which our country is dedicated.” 

By the beginning of 1943, Artists for Victory had a national individual 
membership of over ten thousand painters, sculptors, designers, and 
printmakers. A nonprofit organization with headquarters at 101 Park 
Avenue in New York, their capital was, in their own words, “largely 
enthusiasm and very little else.” Taking as their symbol the Winged 
Victory of Samothrace and, as a basis for their philosophy, Roosevelt’s 
State of the linion message of January 6, 1942, in which the president 
emphasized the Four Freedoms as a moral foundation for our nation’s 
role in world affairs, Artists for Victory, Inc., pledged a minimum of five 
million man-hours to the war effort and launched an active program. 

One of their main thrusts was to function as a liaison between indi¬ 
vidual artists and the federal, state, and local government agencies and 
private industries and businesses needing artistic jobs done for war pur¬ 
poses. Artists all over the country were classified and cross-indexed 
according to their training and capabilities, and matches were made 
with available job openings. Artists for Victory' also acted as a clearing¬ 
house for temporary studio space for servicemen stationed in New York, 
sent artists to do portrait sketching or work as recreational instructors in 
service hospitals, and sent muralists to decorate U.S.O. centers and ser¬ 
vice mess halls. 

In order to encourage aesthetic activity in a time when cultural values 
were not foremost in people’s minds, Artists for Victory' held weekly 
radio shows, for a time, on station WINS in New York and published a 
bimonthly bulletin to its members, printed without charge by Art News 
magazine. For even more visibility, they began to sponsor competitive 
exhibitions. The first and largest of these opened on the first anniversary' 
of Pearl Harbor Day', December 7, 1942, at the Metropolitan Museum of 
Art in New'York, the result of an open competition held with the general 
aim of keeping the arts alive during the war. Manny Farber, a writer for 
Magazine of Art who reviewed the show (which comprised 1,500 w'orks 
in all media) noted, “It is interesting how few of these [artists] w r ere 
influenced by the war . . . yet nothing else is so constantly on our minds 
or in our feelings.“ 

This could not be said, however, of Artists for Victory’s second major 
undertaking, announced in May 1943. The group had decided to launch 


its own special Four Freedoms Campaign in conjunction with the 
upcoming national observation of Four Freedoms Days designated for 
September 12-19. They sought to interest patriotic, educational, manu¬ 
facturing, financial, business, and other groups in their programs, as well 
as to bring about a closer cooperation between artists and the commun¬ 
ity in an all-out effort to win the war. Part of this objective was to be 
achieved by holding a competition limited to printmakers. 

Devised by the head of Artists for Victory’s Graphics Committee, 
Joseph LeBoit, this competition was announced in 3,000 circulars, as 
well as in all of the leading art publications. To be titled “America in the 
War,” the exhibition was to consist of 100 prints and to include exam¬ 
ples from the four major types of graphic media: intaglio (etching and 
engraving), relief (woodcut and linoleum block), stencil (silkscreen, or 
serigraphy), and planographic (lithography). 

In the prospectus for the show, LeBoit wrote: 

Artists for Victory invites all artists to participate in this national 
graphic arts exhibition which promises to be a dramatic event in the 
world of art. The theme, “America in the War,” should be interpreted 
in its broadest sense, so that the exhibition when assembled becomes 
a picture of America in 1943, of a country and a people in their 
second year of war. 

Each artist competing was free to submit three different works, by the first 
week in August, to a jury composed of noted painter and graphic artist 
William Gropper, printmaker Armin Landeck, and curator of the Phila¬ 
delphia Museum of Art Print Department Carl Zigrosser. Editions were to 
be limited to 100. 

The presentation was planned for October, when the exhibit would 
be shown simultaneously in twenty-six museums across the United 
States—the first such synchronized showing of its kind in America. Each 
artist chosen would have to submit twenty-five impressions in addition 
to the one judged. By this unique arrangement. Artists for Victory 
explained, the graphic message of these artists would be delivered over 
a national network. All prints would be offered for sale and, in addition, 
twelve prizes were to be awarded, totaling $800 in war bonds. There 
would be four first prizes of a $100 bond in each technical category, four 
second prizes of a $50 bond, four $50 third prize bonds, and four 
honorable mentions. 

LeBoit emphasized that any print that conveyed the impact of the war 
on the life of the American people was eligible. For those wishing to do 
new work, Artists for Victory suggested five subject categories that might 


be considered as themes: Heroes of the Fighting Front, Action on the 
Fighting Front, Heroes of the Home Front, The Enemy, and The Victory 
and Peace to Follow. 

On October 20, 1943, “America in the War” opened as planned, as a 
contemporaneous presentation all over the country. Art News printed 
the official catalog and price list of the exhibition in its October 1-14 
issue, headlined with a silkscreen by Richard Floethe, The Liberator 
(fig. 12), which spelled out the Four Freedoms. Famed etcher John Taylor 
Arms wrote a lengthy article on printmaking processes, illustrated by 
works from the show. 

In the prospectus, the raison d’etre for “America in the War” had been 
explained this way: 

At all times the print has been an art form most expressive of contem¬ 
porary life. The times in which we live should call forth renewed 
activity in this historical medium—the medium of Durer, Goya, and 
Daumier. The artist who today interprets the emotions and experi¬ 
ences of the American people serves not only a cultural, but a patri¬ 
otic purpose. 

After the exhibition opened, Art News published a letter from one of the 
artists involved in the project, Karl Schrag, which attempted to gauge the 
success of this call for social commitment. Schrag wrote, “The exhibi¬ 
tion ‘America in the War’ proves again . . . that the graphic arts can be 
like a magic mirror in which the essence of the time is reflected. . . . 
Mural or easel painting cannot express it. Photographs lack human feel¬ 
ing and concentrated expression.” 

Many of the printmakers who submitted their work to “America in the 
War” were new to the exhibition scene. Almost one-third of them were 
women. From all over the country, they grappled with the issues of the 
day both using contemporary techniques—such as abstract patterniza- 
tion, emphatic distortion, and transposition—and updating such age-old 
interpretive tools as parody, satire, polemic, rhetoric, literary and reli¬ 
gious allusion, symbolism, and anecdote. The influence of political car¬ 
toons and war posters was clear in the immediacy and intensity of many 
of the works, which sought to move and shock and to create an emo¬ 
tional identification on the part of the observer. 

“Heroes of the Home Front” subjects were the most numerous among 
those prints chosen by the judges for the “America in the War” show. 
Thirty-four of the works follow closely the description in the announce¬ 
ment which had suggested that this category include the soldiers of 
production, the merchant marine, farmers, women in industry, and peo¬ 
ple in the volunteer services, victory gardens, and so on. 


3 


There were a number of award winners in this group, including first 
prize in serigraphy to Robert Gwathmey, whose flat-color Rural Home 
Front (fig. 14) is an interesting composite aimed at showing the total war 
effort of farm people, including children. Labor in a Diesel Plant (fig. 

7), by Letterio Calapai, a prizewinner in relief, is also a compound 
image, which was inspired by the artist’s personal experience doing 
defense work at the American Locomotive Company in Auburn, N.Y. He 
even included in the lower left corner a portrait of himself rolling an oil 
drum. Honorable mention in intaglio was awarded Will Barnet for an 
aquatint showing a black tailor at work in Harlem, sewing endlessly into 
the night. Working on the swing shift was a popular subject in the prints 
on this theme. 

The surprise choice of the judges for first prize in intaglio was the 
etching of a virtually unknown woman artist from Tulsa, Oklahoma. 
Margot Holt Bostick’s Portrait of a Soldier, the depiction of an arc 
welder, was commended by critics as an example of outstanding bril 
fiance, texture, and design. A wood engraving by Chicago artist Mara 
Schroetter juxtaposed a welder and a fighting infantryman to make even 
clearer the point that both were equally needed for victory. 

Helen West Heller and Jolan Gross-Bettelheim both used a semi 
abstract approach to augment the impact of their works. Heller, in a 
powerful, strongly designed woodcut, Magnesium Botnb( fig. 15), showed 
two women air raid wardens operating a backyard stirrup pump, wearing 
the familiar white helmut and armbands of the Office of Civilian 
Defense. Gross-Bettelheim’s Home Front (fig. 13), reminiscent of the 
boldly rhythmic compositions done by British artist C.R.W. Nevinson 
during World War I, expressed formally the dynamic beauty of a perfectly 
paced defense plant assembly fine. 

Another stunning print, a lithograph by New Orleans artist Caroline 
Durieux, (fig. 10), set up a dramatic repoussoir with the expressively cari¬ 
catured faces and elaborately upswept hairdos of two mulatto jazz singers 
entertaining servicemen on Bourbon Street. Several of the artists in the 
show were particularly interested in the role and situation of black 
Americans on the home front. Most notable, besides the Durieux, are 
Julius Bloch’s sensitive portrait, Sheet Metal Worker (fig. 2), of a black 
youth too young to fight but clearly intent on doing his part at home, 
Sylvia Wald’s huddled group, The Boys, and Helen Johann’s Next of Kin 
(fig. 17), depicting an elderly black woman, her face fined and weary, 
gripping a Detroit newspaper. Its two clearly readable headlines, “Race 
Riots” and “Allies Take Base,” juxtapose rather ironically the cause all 
Americans were fighting for with the domestic tensions exacerbated by 
the war, which forced President Roosevelt to send in troops to put down 


4 


a racial flare-up over housing shortages in the city of Detroit in 1942. 
Johann does not make it clear whether this woman is more affected by 
the battle at home or the war abroad. 

Twenty-one of the artists chosen focused on the subject of “Action on 
the Fighting Front.” There was only one award-winner in this group, 
however. Sol Wilson’s winning serigraph, The Twelfth Day (fig. 41), was 
suggested by news reports of sailors floating adrift at sea on a raft for 
almost two weeks after their ship was destroyed. 

Perhaps not surprisingly, a number of artists in this category had 
some form of close personal contact with the prosecution of the war. 
Hawaiian-based artist Alexander Samuel MacLeod was one of the first 
eyewitnesses on the site of Pearl Harbor, arriving there with his water- 
colors as quickly as the first photographers. MacLeod later grouped 
works like the print he exhibited in this show, Havoc in Hawaii (fig. 

(fig. 20), in a book depicting the Japanese attack. James Hollins Patrick, 
represented by a lithograph, This Is Our Enemy (fig. 27), was a civilian 
camouflage expert on the West Coast who helped train bombardiers 
such as those shown in his print. Harry F. Tepker, who exhibited 
Mountain Mortar Firing (fig. 38), was a private first class in the U.S. 
Marines. He later also exhibited in a showing of paintings related to the 
Pacific theater, “The War against Japan,” sponsored by the U.S. Treasury 
Department. Marine combat artists, like Tepker, were expected to pass 
the same rigorous tests and share the same hardships and dangers as 
other fighting members of the corps. Tepker, Corporal John Ward 
McClellan, and U.S. Navy Lieutenant Commander Jack Frank Bowling are 
probably the only artists included in the “America in the War” show 
who knew from experience the full meaning of being involved in com¬ 
bat action. 

One of the most interesting “Action on the Fighting Front” prints was 
Freedom's Warrior (fig. 40), a lithograph by Charles Banks Wilson, who 
had grown up on a multitribe Indian reservation in Oklahoma. 

Freedom's Warrior was originally drawn by Wilson to illustrate an article 
he wrote for the January' 10, 1943, issue of the New York Herald Tribune 
syndicate’s This Week magazine on the role Native Americans were 
playing in the Second World War. Flanked by Indians in ceremonial 
dress, a young brave in uniform is seen charging forward, carrying the 
American flag, to do his part in defending his country. 

The next subject division, “Heroes of the Fighting Front,” was envi¬ 
sioned in the prospectus as dealing with known personalities, such as 
General Eisenhower and General MacArthur. Only one printmaker in the 
show portrayed a specific soldier-hero, however. Hoyt Howard entered a 
print entitled Johnny Rivers at Guadalcanal, but for the most part the 


fifteen artists in this group were more sympathetic toward the anony¬ 
mous, unsung fighting man. For example, Leonard Pytlak’s They Serve 
on All Fronts ( fig. 28) delineates the heroic role of the doctors and 
nurses of mobile medical units. In Phil Paradise’s Inductees, a group of 
raw recruits get their first glimpse of an army base. And Raphael Soyer’s 
Farewell (fig. 34) evokes the very common, but nonetheless moving, 
scene of soldiers bidding their loved ones goodbye. All of these prints 
were chosen for prizes by the jury. 

Minna Citron, a New York artist who had three sons in the armed ser¬ 
vices, show'ed, in a miniature etching, her son Tom departing for the 
Pacific campaign as an amphibian engineer. As Tom would have liked, 
Citron tucked his dog, Curley, into the knapsack on his back (fig. 8). A 
companion print Citron later made showed Tom returning to Curley. In 
an expansion of the concept of “Heroes of the Fighting Front,” Margaret 
Low r engrund created a lithograph in which the barely visible, tiny figures 
of Roosevelt and Churchill, meeting on a yacht off the coast of New¬ 
foundland to draft the Atlantic Charter, are seen to cast impressive meta¬ 
phorical shadows on the world. 

The theme described as “The Nature of the Enemy” elicited a 
response from nineteen of the chosen artists. Many of these concen¬ 
trated on the victims of Fascist repression. The most savage and venom 
ous expressions of the show were reserved for depictions of the Axis 
leaders, such as Harry Sternberg’s serigraph, Fascism (fig. 36), in which 
a three-headed monster—having the features of Hitler, Mussolini, and 
Hirohito—is seen stomping on symbols of the achievements of 
civilization—books, religious symbols, a compass and triangle. Henry 
Simon also showed the Axis partners, but in the guise of the biblical 
Horsemen of the Apocalpse (fig. 32). Beatrice Levy portrayed Hitler sur¬ 
rounded with corpses floating in a river of blood. Nazis were depicted as 
brutal, debauched drunkards by exhibition director Joseph LeBoit, and 
as death-heads by Seymour Nydorf. Fascism was personified in the form 
of a creature from the horror shows by Cleveland artist Joseph Haber. 

Hans Jelinek, an Austrian immigrant who won first prize in the relief 
category, showed The Last Walk (fig. 16), one of the impressions from a 
twelve-print wood-engraving series which he did after reading news 
reports of the total rape and destruction by the Nazis of the Czech vil 
lage of Lidice. The hard-edged angularity of his composition visually 
reinforces the mad brutality of the bayonet-wielding Germans seen 
rounding up the innocent Jews. The same story also inspired another 
first-prize winner, Benton Spruance of Philadelphia. By depicting three of 
the townspeople yoked or nailed to crosses, Spruance, in his Souvenir of 
Lidice (fig. 35), compared their suffering with the martyrdom of Christ. 


Religious allusions w r ere popular in this group. To cite two other 
examples, Prentiss Taylor’s Uprooted Stalk (fig. 37) was a Pieta, and Karl 
Scrag’s Persecution (fig. 30) an Ecce Homo. The isolated, dignified fig¬ 
ure in the latter, being shown, like Christ, to the ugly, almost monstrous 
crowd by the German soldiers, represents everything of moral and spir¬ 
itual value that had to be saved from total destruction. More contempor¬ 
ary in context, Pittsburgh artist Helen King Boyer’s print Rumor (fig. 6) 
reminded viewers of “America in the War” that the perfidy of the enemy 
could be found everywhere, by depicting a “Tokyo Rose” figure. 

Eleven of the selected printmakers chose to elaborate the theme 
“Victory' and Peace to Follow,” a category' which Artists for Victory had 
recommended be directly concerned with the impetus behind the exhi¬ 
bition: Roosevelt’s plans for postwar world harmony. Some, like 
Lawrence Barrett and William Gropper (one of the judges), envisioned 
soldiers and displaced persons returning to their homes, newly liber¬ 
ated, after the war. Charles Keller, an artist active on peace committees, 
showed a meeting of like-minded men and women. William Soles, in 
his award-winning The Freedoms Conquer (fig. 33), translated into 
graphically expressionistic terms his fervent belief in the ability of the 
Allies to vanquish the Axis powers, an ability not yet fully demonstrated 
in 1942-43, the bleakest years of the war. Several artists, such as Ralph 
Fabri and Richard Floethe, spelled out in specific terms the liberties 
Americans were fighting to protect (figs. 11 and 12). 

After its initial showing, the “America in the War” exhibition con¬ 
tinued, for several years, to circulate intact or in smaller versions to 
U.S.O. centers and army camps, as well as to additional museums, such 
as the National Gallery of Canada. Artists for Victory followed its success 
with a national war poster competition, to disseminate slogans adopted by 
the U.S. government Office of Facts and Figures; a greeting card design 
competition, cosponsored in 1943 with the American Artists Group, to 
interpret the spirit of the Christmas season in terms of hopes for global 
peace; several “Portrait of America” exhibitions, on which Artists for Vic¬ 
tory' collaborated with the Pepsi- Cola Company; and a British-American 
Goodwill Exhibition, organized in cooperation with the Central Institute 
of Art and Design, which toured on both sides of the Atlantic. 

Artists for Victory’s service to the nation was praised not only by Presi¬ 
dent Roosevelt but also by the U.S. Congress, and the group received a 
medal of commendation for services rendered to the U.S. Army. In late 
1945, with the war drawing to a successful conclusion, the leaders of the 
group considered restructuring to continue as a peacetime organization. 
Response from the membership, however, indicated lack of interest, and 
the corporation phased itself out of existence as of February 1946. 


5 


In October 1945 the executive secretary of Artists for Victory sent out 
letters to all of the participants in “America in the War,” asking if they 
would agree to donate copies of their prints to the Library of Congress, 
which had expressed an interest in acquiring a complete set of the 
works making up the original exhibition to become part of the nation’s 
permanent record of the war. The gift was received in April 1946, and 
the Library' of Congress is now the only place where the complete col¬ 
lection of prints from the show exists intact. 

Putting these prints together again for the first time in almost forty' 
years recreates an extraordinary' sociological and artistic event. No 
precedent exists for Artists for Victory, Inc., in any previous war fought 
by this country'. The prints from “America in the War,” although more 
imaginative than factual, demonstrate what Americans thought and felt 
and show how they lived during World War II. For the most part, the 
prints exhibit an expressiveness, a vivid intensity, and a power of syn¬ 
thesis and interpretation that combine to provide an extraordinary 
understanding of the modern reaction to war. They suggest something 
about the spirit of the American people in a crucial period of the 
nation’s history. 


6 


Similar visual material on the Korean and Vietnam wars is almost 
nonexistent. The main images from these conflicts are journalistic photo 
graphs, movie newsreels, and television videotapes, which provide a 
completely different kind of experience for the viewer. The ability of 
artists to personalize and convey the experience of war through the 
interpretive tools at their disposal creates a picture of the feelings and 
emotions aroused by war very' different from the literal documentation 
of the camera. 

A June 11, 1982, editorial in the Washington Post newspaper began, 
“There is a strange, even chilling, split-screen aspect to the war talk fil 
ling the air these days.” In the current climate of increased debate over 
defense spending and military preparedness, “America in the War” sud 
denly takes on a renewed pertinence. Those who remember World War 
II as well as those who have never personally experienced a war with 
such clear-cut issues can enjoy and learn from this opportunity to re 
examine and reevaluate this important collection of prints. 


Selected Bibliography 


Artists for Victory, Inc. 

A chronological list of contemporary sources about the artists’ organization. 

“National Art Council for Defense; Artist’s War Measure for the Attention of All 
Art Societies and All Who Work in the Visual Arts." Art Digest 16 (December IS, 
1941): 33. 

“Artists Council for Victory'.” Magazine of Art 35 (January 1942). 

“Artists Council for Victory.” Art Digest 16 (February' 1, 1942): 32-33. 

“Organization.” Magazine of Art 35 (February' 1942). 

“10,000 Artists Unite for Victory'.” Art Digest 16 (February' 1, 1942): 17. 

Durney, H. “National Art Council for Defense Organized.” Design 43 
(February 1942): 25. 

“Organization.” American Artist 6 (March 1942). 

“Organization.” Architectural Record 91 (March 1942): 12. 

“Artists for Victory’.” Art Digest 16 (August 1, 1942): 28. 

“Artists for Victory Exhibition Issue.” Art News 41 (January 1-14, 1943). 

“Workshop Plans.” Art News 42 (February’ 15, 1943): 27. 

“Artists for Victory'Week.” Art News 42 (April 15, 1943): 26. 

"Five Million Man Hours Was Pledged to the War Effort.” Art News42 
(May 1, 1943): 27. 

“A Summing Up.” Art News 42 (October 1-14, 1943): 28. 

"Whither Victory'?" Art Digest 18 (January i 5 t 1944 ): 10. 

“Bulletin to Members.” Art News (September 1944-January 15, 1946). 

“Artists for Victory Plans Now.” Art Digest 19 (December 15, 1944). 

Boswell, Peyton. “Disband.” Art Digest 20 (January 15 , 1946): 3- 


“America in the War” 

A chronological list of contemporary sources on the exhibition. 


“America in the War; Graphic Competition.” Art News 42 (May 15, 1943): 24. 
“National Hook-up for Prints on the War.” Art Digest 17 (June 1943): 8. 

“Prints on Tour.” Art News 42 (June-July 1943). 

“America at War: 100 Contemporary Prints, Now on Exhibit (and on Sale) in 26 
American Museums and Galleries.” Magazine of Art 36 (October 1943): 224-25. 

“Prize-winners of National Graphic Arts Exhibition.” American Artist 1 
(October 1943): 24-25. 

“America in the War; Prints at Kennedy Galleries.” Art Digest 18 
(October 1, 1943): 5, 24. 

Arms, John Taylor. “Printmakers’ Processes and a Militant Show: ‘America in the 
War.’” Art News 42 (October 1-14, 1943): 8-15. 

Millier, Arthur. “Synthetic Venom in Prints for Victory Exhibition.” Art Digest 18 
(October 15, 1943): 24. 

Schrag, Karl. Letter to the editor. Art News 42 (November 1-14, 1943). 

"The Print Show.” Art News 42 (November 15-30, 1943). 

“Touring Print Show. America in the War.’” Art News 44 (October 1, 1945): 36. 

Note- According to Artists for Victory's publicity committee report of January 31, 
1944, fifty newspapers, nine magazines, and three radio stations covered the 
exhibition. 


7 









The Artists and Their Works 






Albert Abramovitz 

(1879-1963) 

Woodcut: Letter from Overseas 


Albert Abramovitz was born in Riga, Russia, on January' 24, 1879. He 
studied art at the Imperial Art School in Odessa and at the Grande 
Chaumiere in Paris. While in Paris, he became a member of the Salon in 
1911 and, in 1913, a member of its jury. Also in 1911 he was awarded a 
medal at Clichy and the Grand Prize at the Universal Exhibition in Rome 
and Turin, Italy. 

In 1916 Abramovitz came to America. His first solo show in this coun¬ 
try' took place in 1921 at the Civic Club in New York City, where in the 
1940s he had one-man exhibitions at the Bonestell and New-Age gal¬ 
leries. During that decade he lived in Brooklyn and was active in the 
American Artists Congress and the Artists League of America. He took 
part in such politically oriented exhibitions as the June 1941 “In 
Defense of Culture” show, which was mounted in passionate opposition 
to the rising threat of Fascism and jointly sponsored by the American 
Writers and Artists Congresses, and the June 1942 showing at the A.C.A. 
Gallery, “Artists in the War.” 

His work is included in such public collections as the New York Pub 
lie Library and the Metropolitan Museum of Art. 

Sources 

“Exhibition, New Age Gallery.” Pictures on Exhibits (March 1946): 31 
Obituary. New York Times, July 14, 1963. 

Who's Who in American Art: 1940-47, 1953- 


Beatrice Harper Banning 

(1885-1960) 

Drypoint: Black Out 


Beatrice Harper was born December 5, 1885, in Staten Island, New 
York. She studied at the Cooper Union Art School, the Art Students 
League, the National Academy of Design, and several European art 
schools as well. 

At the time of her submission to “America in the War,” Beatrice 
Harper was married to Waldo Banning and was living in Old Lyme, Con¬ 
necticut, where she remained active as a painter and printmaker until 
her death. Throughout the 1940s, she actively exhibited with many 
organizations, such as the Society of American Etchers, the Old Lyme Art 
Association, and the Connecticut Academy of Fine Arts (which awarded 
her a prize in 1944). She also showed at the Women’s International 
Exhibition in London in 1946. 

Public collections in which Banning’s work may be seen include the 
New York Public Library and the Metropolitan Museum of Art. 

Sources 

Who's Who in American Art: 1940-47, 1953, 1959. 


11 






Will Barnet 

(b.1911) 

Aquatint: Swing Shift 


Will Barnet was born on May 25, 1911, in Beverly, Massachusetts. He 
studied at the School of the Boston Museum of Fine Arts with Philip 
Hale from 1927 to 1930 and, on scholarship, at the Art Students League 
in New York, where he was a special student of Charles Locke from 1930 
to 1933- Barnet made his first lithograph in 1932 and had his premier 
one-man showing in 1935. This exhibition, at the Eighth Street Play¬ 
house in New York, presented social themes and New York scenes in a 
style influenced by Daumier. 

In 1935, Barnet succeeded Locke as official lithographic printer at the 
Art Students League. In this capacity, he printed stones for artists such as 
Raphael Soyer, Jose Clement Orozco, and Adolph Dehn, through 1946. 

In 1936, Barnet was hired by the W.P.A. Graphics Project not only as a 
printmaker but also as a technical adviser to improve the quality of 
W.P.A. prints. 

In 1937, Will Barnet joined the faculty of the Art Students League, 
where he is today. After doing technical work and research in printing at 
the New School for Social Research for several years, he was appointed 
instructor there in 1941, and he began to teach in 1945 at the Cooper 
linion, where he was made full professor twenty years later. Barnet has 
been guest professor or visiting critic at such institutions as Yale Univer 
sity (1952-53), the University of Wisconsin (Madison), the Munson- 
Williams-Proctor Institute, the School of the Boston Museum of Fine 
Arts, and Cornell University (1968-69). He has taught summers at uni¬ 
versities in Canada, Montana, Iowa, Washington, Minnesota, and Pen¬ 
nsylvania. In 1964, he was given a Ford Foundation grant to be artist-in 
residence at the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts in Richmond and, in 1967, 
he began also teaching at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts 
(PAFA). Since 1954, he has been associated as well with the Famous 
Artists School. 

Will Barnet has shown extensively since 1935. In the 1940s he had 
one-man exhibitions at a number of galleries in New York, such as Ber¬ 
tha Schaefer and Galerie St. Etienne. In 1943, he won honorable men¬ 
tion in the intaglio division of the “America in the War” competition for 
an aquatint depicting a tailor in Harlem working the night shift. 

He became a member of the vanguard group, the American Abstract 


Artists, in the late 1940s. By this time, his characteristic “clear-edged” 
style, which although abstract is still figurative, had coalesced. Even 
though he concentrated more on painting in this decade, he wrote a 
number of articles on printmaking for the League magazine. 

Since the late 1950s, a number of retrospectives of both Barnet’s 
painting and prints have been organized. These include shows at the 
Tweed Gallery, University of Minnesota (1958), the Institute of Contem¬ 
porary Art, Boston (1961), the Albany Institute of History and Art (1962), 
the Brooklyn Museum (1965), the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, Rich¬ 
mond (1964), Associated American Artists (1972), the Jane Haslem 
Gallery, Washington, D.C. (1977), the Roy E. Neuberger Museum in Pur¬ 
chase, New York (1979), and the Ringling Museum in Sarasota, Florida 
(1980). 

Recently, Barnet has won many prestigious prizes, including, among 
others, awards from the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, the Cor¬ 
coran Gallery of Art, and the National Academy of Design. Important 
monographs on his art were published in 1950 and in 1965, the latter by 
the Brooklyn Museum. In 1972, Associated American Artists issued a 
catalogue raisonne of his graphics since 1932. Barnet’s work may be 
seen in such major collections as the Museum of Modern Art, the 
National Gallery of Art, the New York Public Library, the Metropolitan 
Museum of Art, the Fogg Museum at Harvard University, and the Los 
Angeles County Museum of Art. 


Sources 

"Barnet Preaches No ‘Angry Propaganda,”’ Art Digest 14 (December 1938): 17. 

Reese, Albert M. American Prize Prints of the 10th Century. New York: American 
Artists Group, 1949. 

Farrell, James T. The Paintings of Will Barnet: A Selection of 36 Paintings Com 
pleted during the Decade 1939-1949 New York: Press Eight, 1950. 

Seckler, Dorothy G. “Will Barnet Makes a Lithograph (Fine Friends).” Art News 
51 (April 1952): 38-40, 62-64. 




Will Barnet: A Retrospective Exhibition. Text by Orazio Fumagalli. University of 
Minnesota: Tweed Gallery, 1958. 

Will Barnet Retrospective. Foreword by Thomas M. Messer. Boston: Institute of 
Contemporary Art, 1961. 

WiU Barnet Prints, 1932-1964. Text by Una E. Johnson and Jo Miller. New York: 
Brooklyn Museum, 1965. 


Cole, Sylvan Jr. Will Barnet Etchings, Lithographs, Woodcuts, Serigrapbs 
1932-1972, Catalogue Raisonne. New York: Associated American Artists Group 
1972. 

Will Barnet: 27 Master Prints. New York: Harry N. Abrams, 1979. 

Who’s Who in American Art: 1940-80. 



Fig. 1 

Swing Shift 

Will Barnet, b. 1911 

Aquatint, not dated (25 x 27.2 cm) 
Signed in pencil 

"This was a period in my life when I 
spent a great deal of time street 
sketching. ’ It was also a period when 1 
was very interested in the working 
conditions of small shops. This led to a 
series of etchings, including Swing 
Shift. I was impressed to find the 
black man in Harlem was working 
under the same conditions as his 
white counterpart. Both have a strong 
personal dignity. This latter person 
inspired me to make many sketches 
and etchings. Swing Shift remains the 
culmination of all the work with this 
Harlem tailor. ” The artist hoped to 
show “someone who is working end 
lessly into the night. This was a time 
when there were no eight-hour work¬ 
days, and more often than not 
workers had to work a day well 
beyond ten or twelve hours. ” (Will 
Barnet to Ellen Landau, April 14, 
1982) 

Fine Prints Collection 

Prints and Photographs Division 

Library of Congress 
















Lawrence Loms Barrett 

(b.2897) 

Lithograph: The Return 


Lawrence Barrett was born on December 11, 1897, in Guthrie, Okla 
homa. He intended to become a banker; but changing directions, he de¬ 
cided to study art at the Broadmoor Academy and at the Colorado Springs 
Fine Arts Center, whose faculty he eventually joined in 1936. That same 
year, Barrett first took up lithography. Originally taught to print by 
Charles Locke, Barrett was introduced by Adolf Dehn to the many and 
varied technical possibilities of planographic printmaking, especially 
with reference to the achievement of textural and tonal effects. 

In 1940, Lawrence Barrett was awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship to 
do experimental work in lithography and, in 1950, he collaborated with 
Dehn on a book, How To Draw and Print Lithographs. By then a master 
printer, he was frequently called upon to process lithographic stones for 
other artists, especially on the West Coast. Some of the other print 
makers in the “America in the War” exhibition, such as Burr Singer from 
California, used his services at Colorado Springs. 

In the 1940s, Barrett had one-man exhibitions at the M.H. de Young 
Memorial Museum in San Francisco (1941), the Santa Barbara Museum 
(1945), and the Pasadena Museum (1946). He wrote books for children 
and was a member of the American Artists Group, Inc., which published 
his and Dehn’s text, cited by American Artist magazine as “an important 
contribution to the understanding and enjoyment of the lithographic 
print.” 

Barrett’s work can be seen in the collections of the Metropolitan 
Museum of Art. 


Sources 

Barrett, Lawrence, and Adolph Dehn. “How to Draw and Print Lithographs.” 
American Artist 15 (May 1951): 57. 

Who's Who in American Art: 1953- 


14 


Riva Helfond Barrett 

(b.1910) 

Color silkscreen: Patterns for Victory> 


Riva Helfond was born on March 8, 1910, in New York City. She spent 
many of her childhood years in Europe, however, particularly in Russia. 
Returning to the United States in 1923, she studied at the Art Students 
League of New York with William von Schlegell, Harry Sternberg, Yasuo 
Kuniyoshi, Morris Kantor, and Alexander Brook. In the late 1930s she 
worked on the silkscreen unit of the Graphic Arts Division of the New 
York W.P.A. Fine Arts Project. 

In 1942 Riva Helfond Barrett won two awards in an exhibition of 
paintings for children’s rooms at the Museum of Modern Art. Other 
prizes awarded her in the 1940s and 1950s came from the Montclair 
Museum, the Library' of Congress, and the Society' of American Graphic 
Artists. She has had solo exhibitions at the Galerie Collette Allendy in 
Paris (1957) and, in the 1960s, at Highgate Gallery' in Upper Montclair, 
New Jersey, Juster Gallery', New York City', and Bloomfield College, 
Bloomfield, New Jersey. Riva Helfond (the name she uses profession¬ 
ally) has also exhibited widely in both national and international group 
exhibitions and taught graphics at New York University, Union College 
in Cranford, New Jersey, and privately. 

For the past twenty y'ears or so, Helfond has owned and directed the 
Barrett Art Gallery in Plainfield, New Jersey. Her work may be seen 
there, as well as in the permanent collections of such institutions as the 
Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Museum of Modern Art, the Los 
Angeles County Museum, Cornell University, Princeton LJniversity, and 
the Brooklyn Museum. 

Sources 

Collins, J. L. Women Artists in America, 18th Century’ to the Present. Chatta¬ 
nooga: University of Tennessee, 1973- 

Who’s Who in American Art: 1940-47, 1953, 1956. 






Wenonah Day Bell 

(dates unknown) 

Linoleum block: Sailors in War 


Wenonah Bell was born in Trenton, South Carolina. She studied at 
Brenau College, at Columbia University, and at the Pennsylvania 
Academy of the Fine Arts (PAFA). The last institution awarded her two 
Cresson traveling scholarships, enabling her to take summer art classes 
in Capri, Italy, with Hans Hofmann, whose school was based in Munich 
from 1915 until 1930. 

Bell was awarded the PAFA’s Mary Smith prize and first prize in the 
Georgia-Alabama Artists Exhibition, both in 1936. In the mid-1930s, she 
was director of the Dickerson Art Gallery and an instructor in art at the 
Frances Shimer Junior College in Mt. Carroll, Illinois. By the early 1940s, 
she was living in New York City and teaching at the Parsons School of 
Design. 

A painter as well as a printmaker, she has works at the John H. Van- 
derpoel Art Association in Chicago, the Meriwether County Court House 
in Greenville, Georgia, and the U.S. Department of Agriculture Buildings 
in Washington, D.C. 

Sources 

Who's Who in American Art: 1936-37, 1940-47, 1953- 


Alfred Bendiner 

(1899-1964) 

Lithograph: The Heroes of the Home Front—The Filter Room of the 
Aircraft Warning Service 

Alfred Bendiner, architect, mural painter, writer, archaeologist, print- 
maker, and caricaturist, was born July 23, 1899, in Pittsburgh, Pennsyl¬ 
vania. His parents moved to Philadelphia just a few months later. In 
1917, Bendiner won a scholarship to the School of Industrial Art (now 
the Philadelphia College of Art). He then attended the University of 
Pennsylvania, where he received his bachelor of architecture degree in 
1922 and a master’s degree in the same field in 1927. The following 
year, he studied at the atelier of the American Academy in Rome and, in 
1929, after working in the office of Paul P. Cret, Bendiner opened his 
own architectural practice in Philadelphia. 

In another facet of his career, Bendiner’s caricatures appeared in vari¬ 
ous newspapers, including the Philadelphia Evening Bulletin, Philadel¬ 
phia Sunday Bulletin, Philadelphia Record, and Washington Times- 
Herald, from 1917 through the year of his death. He wrote and 
illustrated two books, one whimsically satirizing some of the famous 
musicians associated with the Philadelphia Academy of Music, which he 
titled Music to My Eyes ( 1952), and the other Bendiner’s Philadelphia, 
sketches of local scenes published posthumously in 1964. 

Bendiner contributed articles to the Atlantic Monthly, Harper’s, the 
Journal of the American Institute of Architects, and others. In 1937, he 
was the official artist for the University of Pennsylvania’s archaeological 
expedition to Tepe Gawra and Khafaji, Iraq. Later, only four years before 
his death, he accompanied a similar expedition to Tikal-Tikal in 
Guatemala. He also did research for the American Philosophical Society 
and the Jewish Publication Society. 

Bendiner’s career as an artist included mural painting. He executed 
murals for Byck Brothers in Louisville, Kentucky, the Fidelity- 
Philadelphia Trust Company, the University of Pennsylvania Museum, 
and Gimbel Brothers department store in Philadelphia. Artistic prizes he 
won during his career included two from the Philadelphia Print Club 
(1938 and 1944), the popular award at the 1946 Pennsylvania Academy 
of the Fine Arts exhibition, the 1950 Gimbel mural competition award, a 


15 





prize from the Concord Art Association in 1954, and the Front Page 
Award of the Newspaper Guild in 1955. 

Some of the many public collections in which Bendiner’s work may 
be found are the Cabinet des estampes of the Bibliotheque nationale in 
Paris, the Uffizi Gallery in Florence, the Princeton University Library, and 
the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C. 

Sources 

"Alfred Bendiner, Artist, Architect.” New York Times, March 20, 1964. 33- 

Complete Catalogue, Alfred Bendiner: Lithographs. Essays by Kneeland McNulty 
and Ben Wolf. Philadelphia: Philadelphia Museum of An Depanment of Prints 
and Drawings, 1965. 

Who's Who in American Art: 1953. 


Harriet Berger 

(dates unknown) 

Sugar-lift aquatint: Wounded Soldiers 


Harriet Berger was active as an artist in Englewood, New Jersey, at the 
time of her submission to “America in the War.” 


16 


George Albert Beyer 

(b.1900) 

Color silkscreen: Making Mess Kits 


George Albert Beyer, a painter as well as a printmaker, was born 
August 30, 1900, in Minneapolis, Minnesota. He studied at the Minne¬ 
apolis School of Art and with Sydney Dickinson and Vaclav Vytlacil, the 
latter a former pupil of Hans Hofmann. 

Throughout his career Beyer has remained in the Minneapolis area 
where, in the 1930s, he was a political and social activist who took pan 
in demonstrations in favor of federal unemployment compensation for 
artists and the like. Later, as a septuagenarian, he acted as adviser to a 
radical group of postermakers at the University of Minnesota. This 
group, known as The Poster Factory, specialized in antiwar and socially 
oriented work. 

Beyer has won awards for his art from the Museum of Modern Art, the 
Minneapolis State Fair (1944), the Elisabet Ney Museum (1943), and the 
National Serigraph Society (1941). He is represented in the permanent 
collection of the Ney Museum, located in Austin, Texas. 

Sources 

“City Man, 73, Finds Posters Means to Continue Protest.” Minneapolis Tribune, 
December 1973. 


Who's Who in American Art: 1953- 






Julius Thiengen Bloch 

(1888-1966) 

Lithograph: Sheet Metal Worker 


Julius T. Bloch, a painter and lithographer, was born in Kehl Baden, 
Germany, on May 12, 1888. He studied at the Philadelphia Museum of 
Art School, the Barnes Foundation, and the Pennsylvania Academy of the 
Fine Arts, where he later became an instructor. 

In the early 1930s, Julius Bloch worked on the Public Works of Art 
Project, which preceded the W.P.A. In 1934 his painting Unemployed 
Worker was chosen by President and Mrs. Franklin Delano Roosevelt to 
hang in the executive offices of the White House in Washington, D.C. 
Bloch was among the first to extensively study the character and social 
conditions of black people in America through his art. His print in the 
“America in the War” exhibition is evidence of this interest. 

Julius Bloch won many awards in Philadelphia area exhibitions 
throughout the 1930s, primarily for socially oriented subjects. His work 
is part of the permanent collection of such museums as the Metropolitan 
Museum of Art, the Corcoran Gallery of Art, the Philadelphia Museum of 
Art, and the Museum of Western Art in Moscow, USSR. 

Sources 

“Imported Philadelphia.” Philadelphia Art Alliance Bulletin, April 1938, 2-3. 

Reese, Albert. American Prize Prints of the 20th Century. New York: American 
Artists Group, 1949 (pp. 23, 237). 

Obituary. New York Times, Sept. 24, 1966. 

Obituary. Washington Post, Sept. 24, 1966. 

Who’s Who in American Art: 1940-47, 1953, 1966. 



Fig. 2 XXB641A2 

Sheet Metal Worker Fine Prints Collection 

Prints and Photographs Division 
Julius Thiengen Bloch (1888-1966) 7 ^ rarv of Congress 

Lithograph, not dated 
(25.7x20.6 cm) 

Signed in pencil, edition of 30 


17 





Margot Holt Bostick 

(b.1912) 

Aquatint: Portrait of a Soldier 


Margot E. Holt was born on July 12, 1912, in Shawnee, Oklahoma. She 
graduated from Oklahoma A. and M. College in 1932, where she studied 
under Doel Reed. By the early 1940s, Margot Holt had married H. P. Bos¬ 
tick, who worked on defense projects at Douglas Aircraft. She herself 
worked as a draftsman at the Stanolind Pipe Line Company in Tulsa, 
Oklahoma. Her own experience and her husband’s in war work probab¬ 
ly furnished the subject for her submission to “America in the War.” Her 
print depicts an arc welder in a defense plant. Since Bostick w r as rela¬ 
tively unknown outside Tulsa, critics were surprised when she won first 
prize in the intaglio division of the competition. 

In the late 1930s and early 1940s, Bostick had exhibited several times 
on the East Coast. She showed with the National Academy of Design and 
with the Society of American Etchers in New York. Also, in 1944, one of 
her prints was chosen for the Pennell exhibition at the Library of Con¬ 
gress. Three years earlier, she represented Tulsa in a national sewing 
contest in New York. 


Sources 

“Tulsan’s Etching Takes Top in National Contest.” The Tribune (Tulsa, Okla¬ 
homa), October 2, 1943. 


18 


Hugh Pearce Botts 

(1903-1964) 

Aquatint: Refuge '43 


Hugh P. Botts was born April 19, 1903, in New York City. He studied at 
Rutgers University, the National Academy of Design, the Art Students 
League, and the Beaux Arts Institute. His teachers included Charles Haw¬ 
thorne, Charles Louis Hinton, and Charles Courtney Curran. In the 
1930s, Botts worked on the Fine Arts Project of the W.P.A. and, in January 
1942, he served as an alternate delegate to the Artists Council for Victory 
from the Society of American Etchers. 

Botts exhibited extensively in print and painting exhibitions all over 
the Linked States in the thirties and forties, winning many awards. He 
was given one-man exhibitions at Rutgers University and by the Division 
of Graphic Arts of the U.S. National Museum, Smithsonian Institution 
(1949-50). A contributor of both illustrations and articles to many craft, 
technical, and trade publications, Botts served as director of the national 
Audobon Association Membership Committee in the late 1950s. He lived 
in Cranford, New Jersey, and maintained a studio on Seventy-Eighth 
Street in New York for the last forty-two years of his life. 

His work is part of the permanent collections of many museums, 
including the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the New York Public Library', 
the Brooklyn Museum, and the Fogg Museum at Harvard University. 


Sources 

“Hugh Botts Dies; Painter, Lithographer.” New York Herald Tribune, April 26, 

1964. 

"Hugh Botts, Etcher and Printmaker, 61.” New York Times, April 27, 1964. 
Who’s Who in American Art: 1940-47, 1953, 1959. 







Fig 3 

Reftige ’43 

Hugh Pearce Bolts (1903-1964 ) 

Aquatint (soft ground etching), not 
dated (18.8 x 27.1 cm ) 

Signed in pencil 


XXB740 A45 

Fine Prints Collection 

Prints and Photographs Division 

Library of Congress 







Jack Frank Bowling 

(b.1903) 

Linoleum cut: Periscope Postmortem 


Jack Frank Bowling, an illustrator, craftsman, painter, and sculptor, 
was born in Bonham, Texas, on July 5, 1903. He studied at the U.S. Naval 
Academy and, at the time of the “America in the War” exhibition, was a 
lieutenant commander in the U.S. Navy. By the time of his retirement, he 
had attained the rank of rear admiral. Living in Hawaii in the 1930s, 
Bowling won the John Poole Memorial Prize in Honolulu in 1934 and 
exhibited with the Southern California Printmakers and Southern Print- 
makers Association, as well as the Honolulu Academy. 

During the 1940s, Bowling had one-man exhibitions in Newport, 
Rhode Island; Colombo, Ceylon; Singapore; and Manila, in the Philip 
pines. He listed his address as Hingham Centre, Massachusetts, when he 
entered the Artists for Victory competition; however, his address is given 
in art directories during the war years, and up through the early 1950s, 
as Washington, D.C. Later directories locate him in Philadelphia, Penn 
svlvania, where he operated the Two Star Studio and the Society Hill 
Silver Workshop after his retirement from the navy. 


In the late 1950s and early 1960s, Bowling turned his attention more 
toward crafts, specifically religious items such as chalices, crosses, and 
candlesticks. He won an award in I960 at the exhibition “Church Art 
Today,” held at Grace Cathedral in San Francisco. Bowling has been 
commissioned to make many objects for churches, such as St. Columba’s 
Episcopal Church in Washington, D.C., the Church of the Holy Trinity' in 
Philadelphia, and Immanuel Episcopal Church in Wilmington, Delaware. 
He also contributed five murals to the First Baptist Church in his home¬ 
town of Bonham, Texas. Other examples of Bowling’s work may be seen 
at the Museum of Art in Colombo, Ceylon, and the Honolulu Academy 
of Art. He has also illustrated several books, including The Book of Navy 
Songs and the U.S. Naval Institute Proceedings. 

Sources 

Who's Who in American Art: 1940-47, 1953, 1959, 1962. 


20 





Fig. 4 

Periscope Postmortem 

Jack Frank Bowling b. 1903 

Linoleum cut, not dated 
(17.6 x 19.9 cm) 

Signed in pencil 

XXB756A1 

Fine Prints Collection 

Prints and Photographs Division 

Library of Congress 


21 










Fiske Boyd 

(1895-1975) 

Woodcut: Scarecrow of Europe 


Fiske Boyd was born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, on July 5, 1895, 
descended from several generations of fine cabinetmakers. His father, 
Peter K. Boyd, a master carver in wood and stone and an architectural 
sculptor, was an important influence on his art. Fiske Boyd studied art at 
the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts from 1913 to 1916, where his 
teachers included Garber, Breckinridge, and Pearson. He also studied 
sculpture there with Grafly. In 1917 Boyd attended Jay Hambidge’s sem 
inal lectures on dynamic symmetry in New York. 

During World War I, Fiske Boyd served as a commissioned officer in 
the U.S. Naval Reserve. While a cadet at the U.S. Naval Reserve Officers 
Training School at Harvard University, he became friendly with author 
and artist Denman Ross, who was another important influence in his 
life. From 1921 to 1924, Boyd studied at the Art Students League with 
John Sloan, Boardman Robinson, and Kenneth Hayes Miller. During that 
time, he began exhibiting at the Daniel Gallery and, in 1928, had his 
first one-man show there of woodcuts he had done the previous year in 
Florence, Italy. 

In the early 1930s, Boyd and his wife, the painter Claire Shenehon, 
spent their summers in the Hudson Highlands of New York and their 
winters in Summit, New Jersey, where Shenehon taught school. Under 
the auspices of the U.S. Treasury, Boyd painted a mural for the post 
office in Summit. During the depression years, he also worked on the 
Fine Arts Project of the W.P.A. and had several more one-man showings, 
including one at the Brownell-Lambertson Gallery, New York (1931), 
the Frank M. Rehn Galleries, New York (1935), and the Goodman- 
Walker Gallery, Boston, (1935). 

In 1938, Boyd moved to Painfield, New Hampshire, and became direc¬ 
tor of the Landscape School of Pinehaven located there. He had a one- 
man showing at the Addison Gallery in 1940. In the following decade, 


Boyd exhibited in many group shows, garnering a number of awards, 
most notably the John Taylor Arms Memorial Prize for creative excel¬ 
lence from the Society of American Graphic Artists in 1954. Recently, in 
1979, the Paradox Gallery in Woodstock, New York, gave him a post¬ 
humous retrospective. 

Fiske Boyd’s works may be seen in the collections of the Metropolitan 
Museum of Art, the New York Public Library, the Baltimore Museum of 
Art, the Fogg Museum at Harvard University, Smith College, and others. 


Sources 

Cary, Elizabeth Luther. [Review], New York Times, April 5, 1931 - 

‘‘Fiske Boyd.” In Handbook of the American Artists Group. New York, 1935 
(pp. 14-15). 

Boyd, Fiske. “Tools and Materials VI: Woodcut.” American Magazine of Art 28 
(July 1935): 424-29. 

Original Etchings, Lithographs and Woodcuts Published by the American Artists 
Group. New York, 1937 (pp. 8-10). 

U.S. Treasury Department. Public Works Branch. “Fiske Boyd.” Painting and 
Sculpture Section Bulletins) (March-May 1936): 21-22. 

Reese, Albert M. American Prize Prints of the 20th Century’ New York: American 
Artists Group, 1949 (pp. 27, 237). 

Fiske Boyd 1895-1975. Woodcuts and Drawings. Essay by R. Angeloch. Wood- 
stock, New York: Paradox Gallery, 1979. 

Who's Who in American Art: 1937, 1962. 


22 





Fig. 5 

Scarecrow of Europe 

Fiske Boyd (1895-1975) 

Woodcut, not dated (25.3 x 16.2 cm ) 
33/100, signed in pencil 

XXB761 A3 

Fine Prints Collection 

Prints and Photographs Division 

Library of Congress 

















Helen King Boyer 

(b.1919) 

Drypoint: Rumor 


Helen King Boyer, the daughter of Louise Rive-King Miller Boyer, 
whose work is also presented in this exhibition, was born December 16, 
1919, in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. She studied an with Samuel Rosenberg 
and Boyd Hanna and lithography at the Carnegie Institute of Technology 
with Wilfred Readio. She had her first solo exhibition at age sixteen and 
a one-woman show at the Pittsburgh Arts and Crafts Center in 1951. 

Just before and during the war years, Helen Boyer and her mother 
both worked in drypoint on experimental anodic-coated aluminum, 
which had the advantage of requiring no grounding or biting and 
allowed long editions from lightly cut passages. Her print in the 
“America in the War” exhibition probably reflects her experimental 
period. Later, both she and her mother switched to the more typical 
copper printing plate. 

Helen Boyer exhibited throughout the 1940s with printmakers’ asso¬ 
ciations all over the United States, and she received a Tiffany Foundation 
grant in 1949. In 1955 she executed a mural on silk for the Henning 
Company. By this time, she had moved to Leonia, New Jersey, and was 
working in New'York City' as a designer of tie silks and stuffed toys. 

Boyer’s work is part of the permanent collections of the Carnegie 
Institute, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, and the Miniature Print 
Society', for w'hom she executed the presentation print in 1953. 

Sources 

Collins, J. L. Women Artists in America, Eighteenth Century’ to the Present. Chat¬ 
tanooga: University of Tennessee, 1973- 

Who’s Who in American Art: 1953, 1962. 



Fig. 6 

Rumor 


XXB767A5 

Fine Prints Collection 

Prints and Photographs Division 

Library> of Congress 


24 


Helen King Boyer, b. 1919 

Drypoint, not dated (13.8 x 11.4 cm) 
Signed in pencil 








Louise Rive-King Miller Boyer 

(1890-?) 

Drvpoint: The Hot Mill—First Line of Defense, Aluminum 
Company, New Kensington, Pa. 

Louise Rive-King Miller was born on the south side of Pittsburgh, 
Pennsylvania, on October 30, 1890. She studied at the Pittsburgh School 
of Design and the Carnegie Institute of Technology where she received a 
bachelor’s degree. Among her teachers were Henry Keller, Arthur Sparks, 
and Charles Hawthorne. She married I. W. Boyer, and their daughter 
Helen became a printmaker also, working with her mother in drypoint 
on experimental plates in the late 1930s and early 1940s. In 1946, an 
extensive article in the Pittsburgh Press explained Mrs. Boyer’s method 
of working. At that time, she was living in the Brentwood section of 
Pittsburgh, although she later moved to Leonia, New Jersey, with her 
daughter. 

Louise Boyer exhibited frequently throughout the 1940s with the 
Society of American Graphic Artists and other printmakers’ associations 
all across the United States. She was awarded prizes by the Pittsburgh 
Association of Art and the John Herron Art Institute in Indianapolis. Her 
work may be seen in such public and private collections as that of the 
Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Carnegie Institute, the Richard C. 
DuPont Memorial, and the Aluminum Company of America. Her print in 
"America in the War,” The Hot Mill, was subtitled "First Line of Defense, 
Aluminum Company, New Kensington, Pa.” and attests to the strong 
feelings Louise Boyer had about the steel industry in her native Pitts¬ 
burgh and to her conviction about the importance of the work done by 
American industry' in helping to win a global war. 

Sources 

"An Etcher Looks at Pittsburgh,” Pittsburgh Press, March 17, 1946, p. 18. 

Reese, .Albert. American Prize Prints of the 20th Century>. New York: American 
.Artists Group, 1949 (pp. 28, 238). 

Collins, J. L. Women Artists in America, Eighteenth Century to the Present. Chat 
tanooga: University of Chattanooga, 1973. 


Who ’.s' Who in American Art: 1953, 1962. 


Letterio Calapai 

(b.1904) 

Wood engraving: Labor in a Diesel Plant 


Letterio Calapai, a first-generation American of Sicilian descent, was 
born in Boston, Massachusetts, on March 29, 1904. He studied at the 
Boston School of Fine Arts and Crafts and the Massachusetts School of 
Art, with Charles Hopkinson and Howard Giles. In 1928, he moved to 
New'York, w'here he studied sculpture at the Beaux Arts Institute of 
Design and at the Art Students League with Robert Laurent. He also 
learned the fresco technique of mural painting from Ben Shahn at the 
American Art School. Calapai never formally studied printmaking, but he 
was inspired by the work of the eighteenth-century English printer 
Thomas Bewick. 

In the 1930s, Letterio Calapai worked on the Mural Division of the 
W.P.A. Fine Arts Project in New'York. He had his first one-man exhibi¬ 
tion of oil paintings at the Art Center in New York City' in 1933, and his 
second the following year at the Montross Gallery, whereupon Howard 
Devree, art critic of the New York Times, hailed him as “a new' discovery 
in the art firmament.” In 1939, Calapai worked at the New York World’s 
Fair repairing sculpture damaged in shipping to the Italian pavilion and 
assisting various muralists. To do this, he had to become a member of 
the United Scenic Artists Brotherhood of Painters, Decorators, and 
Paperhangers, Local 929 of the AFL. Calapai then worked with Hugo Gel- 
lert, Anton Refregier, and Stuyvesant Van Veen of the Muralists Guild on 
furthering unionism in the arts and amalgamating the AFL and the CIO. 

Letterio Calapai’s most important mural, commissioned by the W.P.A., 
was a series of three panels depicting the history of military signal 
communication, painted for the 101st Battalion Armory' in Brooklyn. 
Formally presented in June 1939, these panels were acquired by the U.S. 
Army in 1980 and were installed in late 1982 in a special room at the 
LI.S. Army Signal Museum at Ft. Gordon, Georgia. 

During the war, Calapai did defense work in Auburn, New' York, at the 
American Locomotive Company, which was building diesels for use in 
the cold climate of Siberia. This experience w'as recorded in his wood¬ 
engraving Labor in a Diesel Plant, w'hich won third prize in the relief 
medium category' of the “America in the War” competition. Included in 
the lower left corner of this work is a self-portrait of Calapai rolling an 


25 





oil drum. Before this, Calapai had never submitted a print to any show. 
The following year, 1944, one of his works was chosen for Fifty Prints of 
the Year. 

In 1946, Letterio Calapai met Stanley William Havter and became 
associated with the innovative group of printmakers at Atelier 17, 
remaining there for the next three years. He was working at this time on 
a series of illustrations for a Negro Bible and for Thomas Wolfe’s Look 
Homeward, Angel, which he exhibited at the George Binet Gallery in 
New York and in a one-man show sponsored by the Graphics Division 
of the Smithsonian Institution. 

During this time, Calapai was also working as an instructor at the River 
side Museum and the Brooklyn Museum Art School. From 1949 to 1955, 
he taught at the University of Buffalo’s Albright School of Art, where he 
was chairman of the department of graphics. Returning to New York 
City, he taught at the New School for Social Research from 1955 to 1962 
and was instrumental in setting up the Contemporaries Graphic Art Cen¬ 
ter (now the Pratt Graphics Center) with Margaret Lowengrund (another 
of the artists involved in “America in the War”). In I960, Calapai 
founded the Intaglio Workshop for Advanced Printmaking and, from 
1962 to 1965. taught at New York University and at Brandeis University 
in Massachusetts. 

In the 1950s and 1960s, Calapai participated in numerous group 
shows. He won a Tiffany Foundation grant in 1959 and a Rosenwald 
Foundation award in I960. In 1972. the Illinois Arts Council organized a 
traveling retrospective of twenty years of his career. Examples of Cala- 
pai’s work may be seen in numerous public and private collections all 
over the United States, at the Bibliotheque nationale in Paris, the Kunst- 
haus in Zurich, and in museums in Italy, Australia, Israel, India, and 
Japan. 


26 


Sources 


Devree, Howard. [Review, Montross Show). New York Times, December 23, 
1934. 

Historical Development of Military’ Signal Communication: A Mural by Letterio 
Calapai. New York: W.P.A. Federal Art Project. 1939. 

Heintzelman, Arthur W. Wood engravings by Calapai. Boston, 1948. 

Reese, Albert M. American Prize Prints of the 20tb Century’. New York: American 
Artists Group, 1949 (pp. 36, 238). 

“Explorer of Techniques: Letterio Calapai.” Kendall College Magazine (Spring 
1966): 27. 

Long, Chester Clacton. “The Art of Letterio Calapai.” In Letterio Calapai: 20 
Years of Printmaking. Chicago: Illinois Arts Council, January' 31, 1972-February 
25, 1972. 




Fig. 7 

Labor in a Diesel Plant 

Letterio Calapai, b. 1904 

Wood engraving, not dated 
(39.8 x 24.2 cm) 

Signed on block and in pencil 

The artist describes bow be completed 
this print in 1940 in Auburn, New 
York, where he bad taken a war job 
at the American Locomotive Com¬ 
pany: “As the Oil Man' 1 was sta¬ 
tioned in the Oil House attd sum¬ 
moned by telephone when needed 
immediately to serve the engineers on 
the main floor of the plant, where 
diesel engines were being built for use 
in Siberia. During periods in the Oil 
House when I was not needed, 1 
sketched from memory what I had 
seen of the workmen building the var¬ 
ious parts of the engines. From these 
numerous sketches I composed the 
design of the print and engraved it 
onto boxwood. ” (Letterio Calapai to 
Ellen G. Landau, 1982) 

XX Cl 48 B1 

Fine Prints Collection 

Prints and Photographs Division 

Library of Congress 


27 













Minna Wright Citron 

(b.1896) 

Etching and aquatint: As Tom Goes Marching to War 


Minna Wright was born October 15, 1896, in Newark, New Jersey. She 
studied at the Brooklyn Model School, the Manual Training High School, 
the Brooklyn Institute of Arts and Sciences, the New York School of App¬ 
lied Design, and City College of New York. She also took classes at the 
Art Students League, from 1928 to 1935 and again in 1940-42, with 
Kimon Nicolaides, Kenneth Hayes Miller, Reginald Marsh, John Sloan, 
and Charles Locke. In the mid-twenties she married Henry Citron. In 
1930 she had her first solo exhibition at the New School for Social 
Research and in the early thirties established a studio in Union Square, 
an area in which she has remained active as an artist. 

Citron’s work in the 1930s centered around a good-humored, satirical 
treatment of current mores, especially with relation to women. Her one- 
person show in 1935 was titled “Feminanities.” She first came to promi¬ 
nence w+ien the Section of Painting and Sculpture of the U.S. Treasury 
Department commissioned her to paint two murals for the United States 
post office in Newport, Tennessee, on the subject of the Tennessee 
Valley Authority. Her show of paintings related to this project at the Art 
Students League in 1940, was attended by Eleanor Roosevelt. She also 
painted another mural for the post office in Manchester, Tennessee. 

Citron was an instructor in drawing at the Brooklyn Museum from 
1943 to 1946. Her 1943 Midtowm Gallery exhibition w'as entitled “New* 
York in Wartime.” The mother of two sons in action at that time, Citron 
spent many hours sketching at Pennsylvania Station, the Officers Service 
Club of the Hotel Commodore, and other places frequented by soldiers 
and sailors. Her entry to “America in the War” depicts one of her sons 
leaving for duty. 

Around this time, Minna Citron became associated w'ith the innovative 
printmakers at Stanley William Hayter’s Atelier 17, and she began to 
change from using a representational style to depict subject matter based 
on her observation of the milieu around her to doing first semiabstract 


prints and then Abstract Expressionist-influenced nonobjective w r orks. 
She did her first completely abstract print in 1946. That year, she w r as 
Paris correspondent for Iconograph magazine and the following year she 
represented the Linked States government at the Congres internationale 
d’education artistique in France. Citron had a number of solo showings 
in the 1940s, including the Isaac Delgado Museum in New 7 Orleans, the 
Corcoran Gallery of Art, the Galerie Lydia Conti in Paris, Howard Univer¬ 
sity, and the Division of Graphic Arts of the Smithsonian Institution. 

In the 1950s, Minna Citron, at that time a director of the Pan American 
Women’s Association, w 7 ent on a South American lecture and exhibition 
tour, in conjunction w'ith w'hich the Pan American Union published a 
monograph on her w 7 ork. This w r as a period of extensive experimenta¬ 
tion for her. In 1954, a retrospective of a decade of her w 7 ork w r ent on 
exhibit in Philadelphia and Texas. 

A Fellow of the MacDow 7 ell Colony from 1955 to 1959, Citron had a 
show 7 in Yugoslavia sponsored by the U.S. Information Agency, one at 
the U.S. Embassy in London, and one at the American Cultural Center, in 
the ensuing years. She received a Ford Foundation grant to be artist-in- 
residence at the Roanoke Fine Arts Center in Virginia in 1965. From 1971 
to 1972, she taught at Pratt Institute, and all of her w 7 ork since then has 
been done at the Pratt Graphic Center. In 1976, the New 7 York Public 
Library showed in series her graphic oeuvre from 1945 to 1975. 

In addition to writing for Iconograph, Citron has contributed articles 
to such magazines as Artist's Proof, Impression, and the College Art Jour¬ 
nal, as well as to the Brazilian publication U.C.B.E.U., on such topics as 
how modern an communicates to the view 7 er. Her w 7 ork may be seen in 
the collections of the National Museum of American Art, the WTiite 
House, the U.S. Information Agency, the Museum of Modern Art, the 
Victoria and Albert Museum in London, the Bibliotheque nationale in 
Paris, and many others. 


28 



Sources 


“Feminanities.” Time Magazine, May 6, 1935. 

l.ilienthal, David. Two Murals oj T V.A. for the Post Office, Newport, Tennessee, 
by Minna Citron. New York: Art Students League, October 8-19, 1940. 

“Citron Rules the ‘Waves.’” The Art Digest 17 (April 1, 1943). 

"Minna Citron Reveals the Artist in Everyone." Brooklyn Eagle November 12, 
1946. 

Reese, Albert M. American Prize Prints of the 20th Century’. New York: American 
Artists Group, 1949 (pp. 42, 239). 



Fig. 8 

As Tom Goes Marching to War 

Minna Citron, b. 1896 

Etching and aquatint, 1943 
(5.7x 4.1 cm) 

Signed and dated in pencil 

The artist comments that she made 
prints "when my son left for his 
Pacific campaign as an amphibian 
engineer, and when he returned after 
having served his country with honor 
and distinction for three years. In the 
first print, his dog Curley is shown 
tucked away in Tom’s knapsack 
where he would have liked so much to 
have had him. Print two shows Tom 
hotfooting it home to Curley. ” (Minna 
Citron to Albert M. Reese, 1947) 


XX C581 A6 

Fine Prints Collection 

Prints and Photographs Division 

Library> of Congress 


The Graphic Work of Minna Citron 1945-1950. Essay by Karl Kup. New York: 
The New School for Social Research, October 16-29, 1950. 

Wescher, Herta. “Minna Citron—Galerie Arnaud.” Cimaise Paris, 

June-August 1956. 

Sixteen Years After. Minna Citron. Essay by Joseph Frank. Washington, D.C.: 
Howard University Gallery of Art, April 19-Mav 17, 1962. 

Chapman, Max. From the 80 Years of Minna Citron. New York: Wittenborn Art 
Books, 1976. 

Marxer, Donna. “Minna Citron: Getting Old is Just as Good.” Women Artists 
Newsletter ( December 1977): 2. 


29 



Eleanor Coen 

(b.1916) 

Color lithograph: Reprisal 


Eleanor Coen was born in Normal, Illinois, in 1916. She studied paint¬ 
ing at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago under Boris Anisfeld and 
lithography under Francis Chapin and Max Kahn, whom she later married. 
During 1939-40, she worked on the Federal Art Project of the W.P.A. in 
Chicago. Upon graduation from the Art Institute in 1941, she won the 
James Nelson Raymond Traveling Fellowship and used it to live and work 
in San Miguel de Allende, Mexico, where she painted a mural in fresco. 

Some of the other prizes Coen won during her career include the San 
Francisco Art Association purchase prize and awards from the Print Club 
of Philadelphia, the Art Institute of Chicago, the Brooklyn Museum, and 
the Pennell purchase prize at the Library of Congress. In 1959 and again 
in 1967, the Fairweather-Hardin Gallery in Chicago gave her solo exhibi 
tions. Earlier, in 1951, she collaborated in a two-person show with her 
husband at the College of Fine Arts of Syracuse University. Frequent 
subjects in her paintings and color lithographs are the couple's two 
children. 

Eleanor Coen’s work may be seen in many public collections, most 
notably the Art Institute of Chicago, the Museo de Arte Moderna in Sao 


Paulo, Brazil, the Philadelphia Museum of Art, and the National Museum, 
Stockholm, Sweden. 

Sources 

"Exhibit, Palmer House Galleries, Chicago." Art Digest 23 (Feb. 1, 1949): 6. 

"Coen and Kahn to Show Color Lithos." Philadelphia Art Alliance Bulletin 30 
(October 1951): 9. 

Eleanor Coen Paintings—Italy and France. Chicago: Fairweather Hardin Gallery, 
October 18-November 11, 1967. 

Butler, Doris Lane. "Eleanor Coen Canvases Show Imaginative Talent.” Clipping 
in Eleanor Coen and Max Kahn Papers, Archives of American Art, Washington, 
D.C., n.d. 

Weigle, Edith. "Meet Eleanor Coen of City’s Paintingest Family,” Clipping in 
Eleanor Coen and Max Kahn Papers, Archives of American Art, Washington, D.C., 
n.d. 




Richard Correll 

(b.1904) 

Linoleum cut: Air Raid Wardens 


Richard Correll, a painter and printmaker, was born in Springfield, 
Missouri, on October 22, 1904. At the time of the “America in the War” 
exhibition, he resided in New York City. During the war years he exe¬ 
cuted work for the Office of War Information and he showed a politi¬ 
cally oriented piece entitled What Are We Waiting For? in the June 1942 
A.C.A. Galleries’ exhibition “Artists in the War.” Throughout the late 
1930s and early 1940s, he also showed at the Metropolitan Museum of 
Art (in 1942, probably at the large Artists for Victory-sponsored exhibi¬ 
tion), with the Northwest Printmakers, and in Oakland, San Francisco, 
and Philadelphia. 

Sources 

Who's Who in American Art: 1940-47, 1953- 


Gladys Hood Detwiler 

(dates unknown) 

Etching and drypoint: They Do Their Part—The U.S. Merchant Marine 


At the time of the “America in the War” exhibition, Gladys Hood Det¬ 
wiler resided in New York City, where she apparently remained through 
the early 1960s. The Print Collector's Quarterly featured one of her 
works in 1949. 


31 





Frederick Knecht Detwiller 

(1882-1953) 

Color silkscreen: Sardines for the Army 


Frederick Knecht Detwiller was born in Easton, Pennsylvania, on 
December 31, 1882. He graduated from Lafayette College in 1904 and, 
acceding to his parents’ wishes, went to the New’ York Law’ School, where 
he earned an LL.B. degree. After practicing law for only a short time, 
however, he pursued courses in art and architecture at Columbia Uni 
versity. He went to Paris to continue his architectural studies but turned 
toward painting on the advice ofVictor Lalou, president of the Paris 
Salon, who was impressed with Detwiller’s work. Detwiller then com¬ 
pleted his art training at the Academie Colorossi in Paris and the Instituti 
de Belli Arti in Florence. He returned to the United States in 1914, at the 
outbreak of World War I, and settled in New’York City’. 

Detw’iller made his reputation in the 1930s with a series of New’York 
scenes depicting the city’s bridges and their construction, the w’aterfront, 
and the men working in these areas in the hot summer sun. He did not, 
how’ever, restrict himself to the urban environment. For example, as a 
guest of the Canadian Pacific Raikvay, he spent pan of the summer of 
1938 painting the Nimpkesh tribe of Indians at Alert Bay, near Alaska. He 
later became one of the Pemaquid Group, an art colony in Maine. 

In the late 1930s, Detwiller devised a system of Graphic Art Education 
w’hich comprised a series of lectures and exhibitions for college 
students. A typescript describing his system is in the Library’ of Congress. 
He contributed articles to the Print Connoisseur and other magazines 
and w’rote a book, The Story> of a Statue, in 1943- 

Frederick Detwiller served as president of numerous art organizations 
in the 1930s and 1940s, including the Salamagundi Club, the Allied 


Artists of America, and the Society of American Etchers. He was awarded 
an honorary doctor of humane letters degree from his alma mater, 
Lafayette College, in 1945, and he also received many significant prizes 
for his artw’ork. 

Examples of Detwiller’s work may be seen in the permanent collec¬ 
tions of the Brooklyn Museum, the Museum of the City of New’York, the 
Bibliotheque nationale in Paris, the Victoria and Albert Museum in 
London, and many other prominent institutions. 

Sources 

"Wooden Shipyard War Series: Etchings by Frederick Knecht Detwiller.” Print 
Connoisseur 2 (December 1921): 116-21. 

"Painter of Town and Country: Frederick Knecht Detwiller.” American Art News 
21 (March 10, 1923): 2. 

Lord, Alice Frost. “To the Artist Belongs the Duty of Keeping Faith and Cherish¬ 
ing Beauty'.” Lewiston (Maine) Journal, magazine section, September 16, 1944. 

"Frederick Knecht Detwiller Exhibition.” Pictures on Exhibit 11 (February’ 

1949): 23-24. 

Reese, Albert M. American Prize Prints of the 20th Century. New York: American 
Artists Group, 1949 (pp. 52, 240). 

Who’s Who in American Art: 1940-47, 1953. 


32 





Fig. 9 

Sardines for the Army 


Frederick Knecht Detwiller 
(1882-1953) 

Color silkscreen, 1943 
(45.6 x 25.5 cm) 

11/42, signed and dated on screen , 
signed in pencil 

“The print was made from a series of 
watercolor studies made in the fish 
wharves in Maine. In sequence I want 
to express the various stages in the 
preparation of the sardines: the boats 
that bring them in from the sea and 
the fisher folk cleaning them on the 
cutting tables. To do this I used the 
diagonal relation of shapes and color 
and linear perspective 
(Frederick K. Detwiller) 

XXD4832 B2 

Fine Prints Collection 

Prints and Photographs Division 

Library of Congress 


33 
















Caroline Wogan Durieux 

(b.1896) 

Lithograph: Bourbon Street, New Orleans 


Caroline Wogan was born on January 22, 1896. Her mother was a Yan¬ 
kee and her father of French Creole ancestry. She studied art at Newcomb 
College of Tulane University' with Ellsworth Woodward, who espoused a 
conservative, nineteenth-century German academic approach, under 
which Wogan chafed as a student. She attended the Pennsylvania 
Academy of the Fine Arts from 1917 to 1919, on a two-year scholarship 
from the New Orleans Art Association. There, under Henry McCarter and 
Arthur B. Carles, she encountered the tenets of modern art. Later, in 
1949, she earned an M.F.A. from Louisiana State University. 

In 1920, Caroline Wogan married Pierre Durieux, an exporter, and 
went with him to live in Havana, Cuba. During this time, she painted 
landscapes and flower arrangements in watercolor and oils and 
designed screens and furniture, in the Chinese manner, for the interior 
decorator Henry Bailey. In 1926, her husband was made Mexican repre¬ 
sentative for General Motors, and they moved to Mexico City, where 
they lived until 1937. Here she began the work in a satiric vein for which 
she is best known. 

In 1930, Caroline Wogan Durieux took up lithography at the suggestion 
of Carl Zigrosser, then head of the Weyhe Gallery'. On a trip to New York, 
she learned the technique from the printer George Miller and, back in 
Mexico, became affiliated with the printer Dario Mejia, at the commercial 
lithography establishment Lithografia Senefelder. She also worked with 
the lithographer Amero at the Academia S. Carlos, and her art benefited 
from a friendship with Diego Rivera. In the 1930s, she had a number of 
solo exhibitions in New Orleans, Chicago, and New York. 

In 1937, the Durieux returned to New Orleans and took up residence 
in the Old French Quarter, and Caroline Durieux became a consultant to 
the W.P.A. Fine Arts Project for Louisiana. She taught at Newcomb 
College from 1938 to 1943 and illustrated the New Orleans City Guide, 
prepared by the local branch of the Federal Writers Project, under the 
editorship of LyJe Saxon. 

Durieux’s work of the late 1930s and early 1940s, in New Orleans, ex¬ 
hibits her own version of the socially conscious tendency so prevalent 
in art at that time. She took a sardonic, psychologically insightful look at 
her surroundings and the people of Louisiana. At the request of Carl 

34 


Zigrosser, one of the judges, she made Bourbon Street, New Orleans for 
the “America in the War” exhibition. This work has become one of her 
most famous prints. 

In 1941, Caroline Durieux worked for the coordinator of inter- 
American affairs and accompanied an exhibition organized by the 
Museum of Modern Art all over South America. Two years later, she 
joined the faculty' of Louisiana State University and, in the late 1940s, 
illustrated a number of books on local subjects, including Gumbo Ya Ya 
(1945) and Mardi Gras Day (1948). 

In 1951, Durieux was given a grant to work on developing the electron 
and cliche-verre printing techniques. In the ensuing decade, she special 
ized in these methods: cliche-verre, which involves the combination of 
photography and graphics, and electron prints, made from drawing with 
ink containing radioactive isotopes, exposed to a sheet of sensitized 
paper, then developed like a photograph. The latter method she 
invented with the help of Naomi L. and Harry' Z. Wheeler, under the 
auspices of the Louisiana State University State Council on Research. 
Durieux has had a number of solo exhibitions of her innovative printing 
methods, including two at the Louisiana State University and one at the 
George Washington University Library' in Washington, D.C. 

A guest artist at the Tamarind Lithography Workshop in the 1960s, 
Durieux has also won numerous other art awards. Examples of her work 
may be seen in such collections as the National Gallery of Art, the 
Museum of Modern Art, the Philadelphia Museum of Art, the Biblio- 
theque nationale in Paris, the Smithsonian Institution, the Louisiana 
State University, and the Atomic Energy' Museum, Oak Ridge, Tennessee. 

Sources 

Rivera, Diego. “On the Work of Caroline Durieux.” Mexican Folkways 5 (July- 
September 1929): 158. 

“An American-Mexican Painter, Caroline Durieux.” L'Art vivantS (January 15, 
1930): 84, 86. 

Rivera, Diego. “Caroline Durieux.” Mexican Folkways 8 (August 1935): 89. 




Salpeter, Harry'. “About Caroline Durieux.” Coronet 2 (June 1937): 50-58. 

Zigrosser, Carl. The Artist in America: 24 Close-Ups of Contemporary 1 Print 
makers. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1942 (pp. 125-31). 

“Caroline Durieux.” Richmond, Virginia, Museum of Fine Arts Bulletin 4 (April 
1944): 1-2. 

Reese, Albert M. American Prize Prints of the 20th Century. New York: American 
Artists Group, 1949 (pp. 53, 240). 


Caroline Durieux. 43 Lithographs and Drawings. Foreword by Carl Zigrosser. 
Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1949. 

Cox, Richard. Caroline Durieux: Lithographs of the Thirties and Forties. Baton 
Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1977. 

Who’s Who in American Art: 1940-80. 



Fig. 10 

Bourbon Street, New Orleans 

Caroline Wogan Durieux, b. 1896 

Lithograph, 1943 (27.2 x 25.3 cm) 
Signed and dated in pencil 

XXD910A4 

Fine Prints Collection 

Prints and Photographs Division 

Library of Congress 


35 





Ralph Fabri 

(1894-1975) 

Etching: The Four Freedoms 


Ralph Fabri was born in Budapest, Hungary, on April 23, 1894. He 
studied architecture for two years at the Institute of Technology in Buda¬ 
pest before switching to a concentration on painting and etching at the 
Royal Academy of Fine Arts, from which he graduated in 1918 with a 
professorial degree. Fabri emigrated to the United States in 1921, at age 
twenty-seven, and was naturalized six years later. Awarded a prize from 
the American-Hungarian Cultural Federation in 1932, he had his first 
one-man show in this country, sponsored by the Gainesville Florida Art 
Association, in 1938. 

In the early 1940s, Fabri was an active member of Artists for Victory. 

He represented the Society of American Etchers to the main organiza¬ 
tion in 1944 and he was elected head of Artists for Victory's Graphic Arts 
Committee in 1945. His work during these years was preoccupied with 
the events surrounding World War II. In 1945, critic Howard Devree of 
the New York Times pointed out that some of Fabri’s prints, dating back 
as early as 1930, actually seemed prophetic of the war. Critics were 
shocked by the pessimistic attitude toward current events in Fabri's one- 
man show sponsored by the Division of Graphic Arts of the Smithsonian 
Institution in 1942. Additional solo showings in the 1940s were held at 
institutions in Philadelphia, Honolulu, Maine, and New York City, and at 
the Szalmassy Galleries in Budapest, Hungary (1946). 

In the 1950s, Ralph Fabri had a large one-man exhibition at the Albany 
Institute of History and Art. He served as staff critic for Pictures on 
Exhibited editor of Today's Art, published in Washington, D.C., by the 
George F. Muth Co. Fabri wrote most of the articles for that publication, 
on such varied topics as the illusion of depth on a two-dimensional sur 
face, Impressionism, Cubism, and art inspired by religion. Fabri also 


wrote several popular books on art, including How to Draw: A Compre¬ 
hensive Handbook for Art Students and Art Lovers (1945), Oil Painting, 
How-to Do-It { 1953), and texts on paper sculpture, painting cityscapes, 
and the history of the American Watercolor Society. 

Ralph Fabri was also a teacher of art. During his career he was on the 
faculties of the Parsons School of Design, the National Academy of 
Design, the Newark School of Fine Arts, and the City' College of New 
York. He served as an officer of such art organizations as the Audobon 
Artists, the Society 7 of American Graphic Artists, and the National Society 7 
of Painters in Casein. He won many prizes throughout his career, and his 
work is in the permanent collections of such museums as the Metropoli¬ 
tan Museum of Art, the Museum of Fine Arts in Budapest, the Ross W. 
Sloniker Collection of Biblical Prints, the New York Public Library, and 
the Honolulu Academy of Arts. 

Sources 

“New York Etcher at National Museum.” Washington Star, December 13, 1942. 

“Etchings by Ralph Fabri.” Directions^ Darien, Connecticut) 7, no. 3 (1944): 16-17. 

Devree, Howard. [Review], New York Times, February 7 25, 1945. 

Reese, Albert M. American Prize Prints of the 20th Century. New York: American 
Artists Group, 1949 (pp. 57, 241). 

Who's Who in American Art: 1940-47, 1953, 1966. 


36 






Fig. n 

The Four Freedoms 

1Ralph Fabri (1894-1975) 

Etching, 1943 (22.6 x 30.1 cm) 
25/100, signed in pencil 

XX FI 24 A8 

Fine Prints Collection 

Prints and Photographs Division 

Library of Congress 


37 
















Hulda Rotier Fischer 

(1893-?) 

Zinc lithograph: Chaos, 1942 


Hulda Rotier Fischer, a painter and teacher as well as a graphic artist, 
was born in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, on July 28, 1893- She studied at the 
Milwaukee School of Art, at the Milwaukee Art Institute, at the Art Insti¬ 
tute of Chicago, and with Morris Davidson, Armin Hanson, and Robert 
von Neumann. For many years she taught art at the Shorewood, Wiscon¬ 
sin, High School. 

Fischer took part in many group exhibitions in the Midwest and West 
in the 1930s and 1940s, including the Wisconsin State Fair (1938-44), 
the Women Painters of America exhibition in Wichita, Kansas (1938), 
and shows at the Oklahoma Art Center (1939-41). She had three solo 
exhibitions between 1938 and 1961. 

Fischer’s work is in the permanent collections of such museums as 
the Milwaukee Art Institute and the John Herron Institute. Examples may 
also be seen at the Winneconni School in Wisconsin, the Merrill Wise 
High School, the Boys’ Therapeutic School, Iron Mountain, Wisconsin, 
the Shorewood, Wisconsin, North Shore Bank, and the Woods, 

Wisconsin, Veterans Hospital. 

Sources 

Collins, J. L. Women Artists in America, 18th Century to the Present. Chatta 
nooga: University of Tennessee, 1973. 

Who's Who in American Art: 1953, 1962. 


38 


Richard Floethe 

(b.1901) 

Color silkscreen: The Liberator 


Richard Floethe was born September 2, 1901, in Essen, Germany. He 
studied in Europe at the Realschule Pyrmont and the Pedagogium Ober 
realschule in Giessen, and learned the rudiments of the graphic arts at 
the Academy of Applied Art in Munich and Dortmund, under Willie 
Geiger and Edward Ege. He next became a student at the Bauhaus in 
Weimar, where he took courses with Paul Klee, Wassily Kandinsky, and 
Laszlo Moholy-Nagy. Before coming to this country in 1928, he executed 
a large historical mural for the International Exposition in Cologne. 

During the Depression in New York, Floethe worked as an art director 
on the W.P.A. Federal Art Project (1936-39) and, from 1942-43, he served 
in a similar capacity with the New York City War Services. He taught 
commercial design at the Cooper Union (1941-42) and serigraphy at the 
Ringling School of Art in Sarasota, Florida (1955-67). Floethe has had 
exhibitions at Pynson Printers, New York (1937), the Philadelphia Art 
Alliance (1944), and the Sarasota Art Association (1955). 

Richard Floethe gained great fame as a cover designer and illustrator 
of adult’s and children’s books. He began, in the 1930s, doing work of 
this type for the Limited Editions Club and won awards for his Tyl 
Ulenspiegl and Pinocchio illustrations in this series. In 1950, he won the 
American Institute of Graphic Arts award for English Is Our Language. 
Floethe wrote on illustrating picture books for the Horn Book magazine. 
In 1939, his book Summer Holiday, a story told in color and line, was 
published by the Brookdale Press. 

Floethe’s print, The Liberator, was chosen by Art News as the cover for 
the October 1-14, 1943, issue, in which the “America in the War” official 
catalog was published. Later the print was sent to the Soviet Union and 
shown at the Kalinin Galleries in Moscow. 

Other examples of Floethe’s work may be seen in the collections of 
the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Philadelphia Museum of Art, the 
Kerlan Collection at the University of Minnesota, and the Spencer Col¬ 
lection at the Fifth Avenue Library, New York. 






Sources 

Floethe, Ronald K. Kid Stuff. Gordon Kerckhoff Productions, 1970. 

Bielschowsky, Ludwig. "Richard Floethe, a German American Illustrator.” Illus¬ 
tration 63 (1974). 

Who's Who itt American Art: 1940-47 through 1980. 


■■ 


Fig. 12 

The Liberator 

Richard Floethe, b. 1901 

Color silkscreen, 1943 
(30.1 x 40.2 cm) 

7/35, signed and dated in pencil 

"My print, The Liberator, was created 
at an emotional time when all our 
minds were concentrated on the 
war’s outcome, ” the artist said in 
1982 about this work. In October 
1945 Floethe'sprint was included in 
an exhibit sent to the Soviet Union, 
where it was singled out as "a very 
striking piece. ” 

XXF628B1 

Fine Prints Collection 

Prints and Photographs Division 

Library of Congress 


39 











Jean Eda Francksen 

(b.1914) 

Lithograph: The Final Exam 


Jean Eda Francksen was born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, on May 9, 
1914. She studied at the University of Pennsylvania, where she received 
a B.F.A. in education, and she took an courses at the Philadelphia 
Museum School of Industrial An and the Barnes Foundation. Her 
teachers included Benton Spruance, Arthur B. Carles, and Stanley 
William Hayter of Atelier 17. Francksen herself taught in the late 1930s 
and early 1940s, at Beaver College in Jenkintown, Pennsylvania, the Phila 
delphia Museum School of Industrial Art, and Swarthmore College. She 
exhibited extensively in Philadelphia from 1938 through 1952, at the 
Museum of New Mexico in Santa Fe (1941), and at the Library of Con 
gress (1943-44). 

Early in her career, Jean Francksen did illustrations for such books as 
Fog on the Mountain (1937) and It’s Fun to Listen (1939). She has exe 
cuted murals for St. Joseph's Hospital in Carbondale, Pennsylvania, the 
Einstein Memorial Hospital, the Riverview Home for the Aged, and the 
Children’s Reception Center, all in Philadelphia. Other buildings in 
which her wall paintings may be seen are Medill Blair High School in 
Fairless Hills and the Jewish Community Center in Scranton, Pennsyl 
vania. Her work is also in the collection of the Philadelphis Museum of 
Art. 


Sources 

Collins, J. L. Women Artists in America, 18th Century to the Present. Chatta 
nooga: University of Tennessee, 1973- 

Who's Who in American Art: 1940-47, 1953, 1962. 


Samuel Greenburg 

(b.1905) 

Color woodcut: For Freedom 


Samuel Greenburg was born in Russia, at LJman, in the Ukraine, on 
June 23, 1905. He received both a bachelor and master of arts degree at 
the University of Chicago and also studied art abroad. He held positions 
as instructor of art at Tuley High School in Chicago and supervisor of art 
for the Chicago Board of Jewish Education (1949-51). In 1947 Green¬ 
burg wrote a textbook, Making Lino Cuts and, in 1952, he was coauthor 
of Arts and Crafts in the Jewish School. 

One-man exhibitions of Samuel Greenburg’s graphics and paintings 
were held at the Delphic Studios in New York City (1934), the Chicago 
Women’s Aid (1939), the Art Institute of Chicago (1947), and the Crea¬ 
tive Gallery (1951). The AIC awarded him a prize in 1942. During the 
decade of the “America in the War” exhibition, he took part in numer¬ 
ous other group shows in Philadelphia, Chicago, New York, Pittsburgh, 
and Washington, D.C., at the Library’ of Congress. His work is in the 
permanent collection of the Museum of Modern Art in Tel Aviv, Israel. 

Sources 


Who's Who in American Art: 1940-47, 1953. 






William Gropper 

(1897-1977) 

Lithograph: Liberated Village 


William Gropper was born December 3, 1897, on the Lower East Side 
of New York, the son of poor Jewish immigrants from the llkraine and 
Romania. Working odd jobs by day, he attended art school at night in his 
teenage years. From 1912 to 1915, he took classes with George Bellows 
and Robert Henri at the Ferrer School. He was dismissed from the 
National Academy of Design, after only two weeks, when he protested 
against having to draw from casts. Gropper also studied at the Chase 
School with Howard Giles and, from 1915 to 1918, at the New York 
School of Fine and Applied Arts. 

From 1917 to 1919, William Gropper worked as staff artist for the New 
York Tribune. He left this job after being radicalized, as the result of an 
assignment to cover a Justice Department raid on the anarchist Interna¬ 
tional Workers of the World, to whose ideas he realized he was sympa¬ 
thetic. After a short stint as seaman and construction foreman in Cuba 
(1922), he returned to New York and became a free-lance magazine 
illustrator and cartoonist for such publications as New Masses, the Liber¬ 
ator, Vogue, the New Yorker, and H. L. Mencken’s Smart Set. He won the 
Collier prize for illustration in 1918 and became the staff cartoonist for 
the Yiddish Communist daily paper Freiheit, in 1924. Later, he drew also 
for the Sunday Daily Worker and was appointed to the editorial board 
of New Masses. Some of Gropper's best work was done for these period¬ 
icals, which were dedicated to the social problems of the working 
classes. 

Although he was never a member of the Communist party, William 
Gropper was chosen as a delegate to the Tenth Anniversary of the 
October Revolution in Russia in 1927, along with Theodore Dreiser and 
Sinclair Lewis. While there, he drew for Russian periodicals, and he pub¬ 
lished a book of drawings of the USSR upon his return to the States in 
1929. The following year, he went back to Russia as a delegate to the 
Kharkov Conference. These experiences were to contribute, much later, 
to his being blacklisted by the McCarthy Committee (1953). In retalia¬ 
tion, he created one of his most famous series of prints, his Caprichos, 
inspired by Goya. 

In the 1930s, Gropper painted murals for the Schenley Corporation, 


the Hotel Taft, the Department of the Interior Building in Washington, 
D.C., and post offices in Michigan and Long Island. He began a series of 
one-man shows at the A.C.A. Gallery. His savage caricature of Hirohito 
pulling the Nobel Peace Prize in a rickshaw, published in Vanity Fair, 
had international political repercussions, involving the U.S. State 
Department. In 1937, Gropper’s one-man show at A.C.A. was dedicated 
to the defenders of democracy in Spain, and a Guggenheim Fellowship 
that year led to a series of prints on the problems of the Dust Bowl. His 
1940 one-man show at A.C.A. celebrated the twentieth anniversary of his 
resignation from the New York Tribune and the beginning of his social 
awareness. 

During World War II, William Gropper painted war bond posters for 
the Abbott Laboratories. Vogue magazine assigned him to do a series of 
caricatures of the Supreme Court in the style of Daumier. Gropper won a 
first prize in the Artists for Victory exhibition at the Metropolitan 
Museum of Art in December 1942, and he served on the jury of the 
“America in the War” exhibition, as well as showing a print of a village 
in Eastern Europe being liberated by the combined forces of the United 
Nations. In 1945, he served as fourth vice-president of Artists for Victory. 

A pamphlet, entitled “Lidice,” that Gropper prepared in 1942 for the 
Office of War Information was rejected because of its extremely graphic 
portrayal of Nazi atrocities. (It was eventually published in South Amer¬ 
ica.) After being assigned to North Africa as an artist-correspondent, 
Gropper was refused permission to go by the War Department. After the 
war, in 1948, he traveled to Europe to see the remains of the Warsaw 
Ghetto firsthand and began his Lest We Forget series in memory of what 
happened there. 

In the 1950s and 1960s, despite his blacklisted status, William 
Gropper continued to exhibit in the United States, primarily at A.C.A. 
Gallery in New York, and abroad (in London, Mexico City, Rome, and 
Israel). A Ford Foundation grant in 1967 led to his first color prints, 
made at the Tamarind Institute Workshop in California. In 1968, 

1971-72, and 1976, he was given three retrospectives: one at the Univer¬ 
sity of Miami, Florida, one organized by A.C.A. (which traveled to Ohio, 


41 



Texas, and upstate New York), and one at the Maryland Institute of Art in 
Baltimore. The American Academy and Institute of Arts and Letters gave 
Gropper a memorial show in 1978. 

William Gropper wrote and illustrated a number of books, including 
Alay Oop (1930), American Folklore (1951), The Little Tailor (1954), and 
The Shtetl (1970). His work may be seen in numerous public collec¬ 
tions. A partial list includes the Art Institute of Chicago, the Biro-Bidjan 
Museum, the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, the Kharkov 
Museum (USSR), the National Gallery of Prague, and the Tel Aviv 
Museum. 


Sources 

Shipley, Joseph T. ‘“Knowing a Man through His Face’: The Art of William 
Gropper.” Guardian, November 1924, 11-15. 

Brace, Ernest. “William Gropper.” Magazine of Art 30 (August 1937): 467-71. 

Salpeter, Harry. “William Gropper, Proletarian.” Esquire, September 1937. 

William Gropper: Etchings. New York: Associated American Artists, 1965. 

William Gropper Retrospective. Essay by August L. Freundlich. Coral Gables, Flor¬ 
ida: Joe and Emily Lowe Art Gallery, University of Miami, 1968. 

Gahn, J. Anthony. “William Gropper—A Radical Cartoonist.” New York Historical 
Society Quarterly {April 1970). 

William Gropper: Fifty Years of Drawing, 1921-1971. Text by Louis Lozowick. 
New York: A.C.A. Gallery', 1971. 

William Gropper. Essay by Wahneta T. Robinson. Long Beach, California: Long 
Beach Museum of Art, 1972. 

William Gropper: Works on Paper 1914-1974. Baltimore, Md: Decker Gallery of 
the Maryland Institute College of Art, 1976. 

“William Gropper, Artist, 79, Dies; Well-known Left-wing Cartoonist.” New York 
Times, January 8, 1977. 


42 


Jolan Gross-Bettelheim 

(b.1900) 

Lithograph: Home Front 


Jolan Gross-Bettelheim was born in Nitra, Czechoslovakia, on January' 
27, 1900. She studied at the Royal Hungarian Academy of Fine Arts, the 
State Academy of Fine Arts in Berlin, in Vienna, at the Grande Chaumiere 
in Paris, and at the Cleveland School of Art. The artists Orlik and Hofer 
were important to her education. Gross-Bettelheim came to the Linked 
States in 1925, moving to New York City in 1938. At the time of the 
“America in the War” exhibition, she resided in Jackson Heights, Long 
Island, an address which remained constant through the early 1960s. 

Jolan Gross-Bettelheim worked as an artist in various media, primarily 
concentrating her attention on lithography, drypoint, and pastels. Her 
only solo showing, in 1945 at the Durand-Ruel Gallery in New York, 
comprised works in pastels. Throughout the 1930s, she exhibited regu¬ 
larly' in group shows at the Art Institute of Chicago and the Pennsylvania 
Academy of the Fine Arts. In January 1939 her work was included in the 
W.P.A. Fine Arts Project show “Prints for the People,” and she was 
included in a process portfolio compiled by Kalman Kubinyi, print 
supervisor for the Ohio W.P.A. Project. In the 1940s her work was 
included in various group exhibitions all over the United States. 

Gross-Bettelheim’s work is in many permanent collections including, 
most notably, the Cleveland Museum of Art, the Seattle Art Museum, the 
Munson-Williams-Proctor Institute, and the Museum of Western Art in 
Moscow, USSR. 


Sources 

“Pastels by Gross-Bettelheim.” Pictures on Exhibitl (October 1945): 24, 33- 

Reese, Albert M. American Prize Prints of the Twentieth Century. New York: 
American Artists Group, 1949 (pp. 71, 242). 

Who’s Who in American Art: 1940-47, 1953, 1959, 1962 






Fig. 13 

Home Front 

Jolan Gross Bettelheim, b. 1900 

Lithograph, not dated 
f40.4 x 30.3 cm ) 

Signed in pencil 

XX B550 B3 

Fine Prints Collection 

Prints and Photographs Division 

Library> of Congress 


43 








Robert Gwathmey 

(b. 1903) 

Color silkscreen: Rural Home Front 


Robert Gwathmey was born in Richmond, Virginia, on January' 24, 

1903- His childhood in the South provided much of the material for his 
art, which has always exhibited a close identification with white share¬ 
croppers and blacks in rural areas and social awareness of the condi¬ 
tions of their lives. Gwathmey studied at the North Carolina State Col¬ 
lege of Agriculture and Engineering (1924-25), the Maryland Institute in 
Baltimore (1925-26), and the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts 
(1926-30). Teachers who influenced his work include George Harding, 
Daniel Garber, and Franklin Watkins. 

During the 1930s, Gwathmey taught at Beaver College, in Jenkintown, 
Pennsylvania, several days a week, spending the rest of his time in New 
York City', where he was an active member of the Artists Union, serving 
for a time as its vice-president. From 1938 to 1942, he taught at Carnegie 
Tech in Pittsburgh, and, from 1942 to 1968, he was on the faculty' of the 
Cooper Union in New York City. 

In 1939, Robert Gwathmey was a winner in the U.S. government’s “48 
States Mural Competition,” which resulted in his decorating the U.S. 
post office in Eutaw, Alabama. In 1940, he took the prize in PM maga¬ 
zine’s “Artist as Reporter” competition and that same year was chosen 
the winner of the fourth contest sponsored by the American Artists Con¬ 
gress for a first New York show. This took place in 1941 at the A.C.A. 
Gallery'. Two subsequent solos by Gwathmey were held there, in 1946 
and 1949. 

Robert Gwathmey took part in numerous war-related art activities in 
the early 1940s. He was one of the signers of a call to American artists 
and writers to convene in defense of culture against Fascism. He exhi 
bited in the A.C.A. Gallery’s “Artists in the War” group show. And he 
served as recording secretary' of Artists for Victory in 1944. Gwathmey 
exhibited in Artists for Victory's British-American Goodwill Exhibition, 
as well as in “America in the War.” His multicolor silkscreen. Rural 
Home Front, a composite design showing the efforts of rural Americans 


with respect to war activities, was awarded first place in the latter’s seri- 
graphy division. In 1946, Gwathmey was chosen to receive the second 
prize in the Pepsi Cola Annual and also received a prestigious grant 
from the American Academy of Arts and Letters. 

Throughout the 1950s and through the 1970s, Robert Gwathmey con¬ 
tinued to win prizes in group exhibitions and to show his work in a ser¬ 
ies of one-man exhibitions, primarily at the Terry Dintenfass Gallery in 
New York City. A visiting professorship at Boston LIniversity in 1968 led 
to a complete retrospective there the following year. One of his most 
recent solo showings, organized by St. Mary’s College of Maryland in 
1976, was partially funded by the American Revolution Bicentennial 
Commission. Examples of Gwathmey’s work may be seen in many 
museums all over the United States. 


Sources 

Robert Gwathmey. Essay by Paul Robeson. New York: A.C.A. Gallery, January 21- 
Februarv 9, 1946. 

Reese, Albert M. American Prize Prints of the 20th Century. New York: American 
Artists Group, 1949 (pp. 73, 242). 

Colt, Thomas C. "Robert Gwathmey.” Richmond, Virginia, Museum of Fine Arts 
Virginia Artists Series, no. 28, n.d. 

Robert Gwathmey. New York: American Contemporary Arts Heritage Gallery, 
September 30-October 19, 1957. 

Robert Gwathmey. Essay by Jonathan Ingersoll. St. Mary’s City, Maryland: St. 
Mary’s College of Maryland and New York; Terry' Dintenfass Inc., 1976. 

Who's Who in American Art: 1940-80. 


44 





Fig. 14 

Rural Home Front 

Robert Gwathmey, b. 1903 

Color silkscreen, not dated 
(25.9 x 46.3 cm ) 

Signed in ink 


"I've simply taken various rural 
images and combined them in a 
composite picture, showing the total 
effort of farm people, including the 
children. I’ve used ten flat colors and 
have been particularly aware of the 
two dimensional space. ” fRobert 
Gwathmey to Albert M. Reese, August 
30, 1947) 


CC G994 B2 

Fine Prints Collection 

Prints and Photographs Division 

Library of Congress 

















Joseph Haber 

(b. ca. 1902) 

Wood engraving: Choose 


Joseph Haber was born in the Cleveland, Ohio, area about 1902. 

When seven months old, he was stricken with infantile paralysis, which 
left him crippled for life. He attended East Tech in Cleveland (because it 
had an elevator), the Cleveland School of Art, and the John Huntington 
Polytechnic Institute. 

In 1929, at age twenty-seven, Haber executed the Higbee Department 
Store special Christmas windows. Despite his physical handicaps, he was 
a very socially and politically active artist in the 1940s. Around this time 
he served as executive secretary' of the Artists Union in Cleveland, a CIO 
affiliate whose aim was to promote art for the masses and make the artist 
a leader in progressive social thought. 

Joseph Haber worked on the W.P.A. in Cleveland, and the Cleveland 
Press, in 1940, dubbed him the Ohio W.P.A. Art Project’s “New Ideas 
Man,” as a result of his development of a method of making decorative 
relief panels out of plastic. He made two such panels to represent the 
joint development of mind and body in education for the Bratenahl 
School’s combined gymnasium and auditorium. He also executed a 
plastic plaque with power tools for the 1939-40 New York World’s Fair. 

A writer for the Cleveland Press noted, in 1940, that Haber’s physical 
handicaps, far from hindering him, had resulted in a sharpening of his 
artistic sense. 


Sources 

"‘Promise Me No Sympathy’ Say's Crippled Artist." Cleveland Plain Dealer, 
November 14, 1929. 

‘‘Clevelander Creates Mural Art with Plastics.” Cleveland Press, April 13, 1940. 

“CIO. Artists Work to Take Art to Masses. Joe Haber’s an Inspiration to Small, 
New Group of Craftsmen.” Cleveland Press, September 20, 1941. 


Edward Hagedorn 

(b.1902) 

Diypoint: Life Boats 


Edward Hagedorn was born in San Francisco, California, in 1902. A 
self-taught artist, he worked in oils, watercolors, lithography, and block¬ 
printing. Beginning in 1937, he specialized primarily in etching, and in 
1952 he published a limited edition portfolio of ten nudes for the San 
Francisco-based Peregrine Press. In the late 1930s, Hagedorn w r orked on 
the W.P.A. in California. 

Hagedorn participated in many group exhibitions throughout his 
career, including shows sponsored by the Library of Congress, the Art 
Institute of Chicago, the Society' of American Etchers, the San Francisco 
Museum of Art, and the Philadelphia Art Alliance. He won several prizes 
in the early' 1940s, including the Artist Fund prize at the Graphic Annual 
of the San Francisco Art Association in 1941. He won an honorable men¬ 
tion at the Fifteenth Annual Exhibition of American Etchings at the Phila¬ 
delphia Print Club in 1942 for a naval war subject. 

Sources 

"Sinking of the Rawalpindi Awarded Artist Fund Prize at Graphic Annual.” San 
Francisco Art Association Bulletin 7 (February' 1941): 43. 






Charles Edward Heaney 

(b.1897) 

Soft ground and aquatint: Mark of the Enemy 


Charles Edward Heaney was born on August 22, 1897, in Oconto Falls, 
Wisconsin. In 1913 he moved to Portland, Oregon. In 1917 he appren¬ 
ticed himself to a jewelry engraver, learning a trade at which he con¬ 
tinued to work part-time until his retirement in 1962. He also enrolled 
in 1917 at the Portland Museum Art School and the University of Oregon 
Extension Division to study, in his spare time, drawing and design. He 
chiefly worked under Harry Wentz, dean of the Museum Art School. 
Another strong influence was the painter C. S. Price. 

In 1922 Heaney began an approximately twenty-year period during 
which his chief interest was printmaking. He studied etching with 
William Givler, 1937-41, and specialized in aquatint from 1941 to 1946. 
About 1932-40, Heaney worked on federal government art projects in 
Oregon as a painter and art instructor. During this period, he made 
annual sketching and painting expeditions to the fossil beds and bad¬ 
lands of the John Day Country' in eastern Oregon and Nevada. In 1942, 
he began to create his “fossil pictures,” with heavily textured and sculp¬ 
tured surfaces simulating the cracked, scraped, and crackled appearance 
of rocks which have undergone natural processes of aging. 

Most of Heaney’s paintings are done in a realist style, similar to the 
Regionalist painting of Thomas Hart Benton, Grant Wood, and John 


Steuart Curry’ as well as that of his mentor C. S. Price. Heaney has partici¬ 
pated in a large number of group shows since the 1930s, winning many 
awards. He has also had numerous one-man exhibitions of both his 
paintings and his prints, in places ranging from Seattle to Scranton, Penn¬ 
sylvania, Utica, New York, and his native Portland. The Portland Art 
Museum gave him a complete retrospective in 1952. Heaney was one of 
a few Oregon artists chosen for “Art of the Pacific Northwest,” a special 
regional invitational exhibition, organized by the Smithsonian Institu¬ 
tion in 1974. His work figures in the permanent collections of most of 
the prominent Northwest museums. 

Sources 

Charles Heaney, Portland Painter and Printer: A Retrospective Exhibition. Essays 
by Priscilla Colt and William H. Givler. Portland, Oregon: Portland Art Museum, 
1952. 

“Biographical Notes. Charles Heaney.” Salem, Oregon: Bush Barn Gallery', April 
1967. 

Who’s Who in American Art. 1937. 


47 




Helen West Heller 

(1885-1955) 

Woodcut: Magnesium Bomb 


Helen West Heller was born of pioneer stock on a farm in Rushville, 
Illinois, in Spoon River Country, in 1885. She began to paint and carve in 
wood as a very young child. As a teenager, she did hand illumination on 
vellum, as well as hand bookbinding. After briefly studying art in New 
York, she returned to Illinois and worked on a farm with her husband. 
After his death, she did factory work and sold in a dry goods store by 
day, painting by night. Heller made her first wood-block in 1923, never 
having had any lessons in this technique. 

By the mid-1920s, Helen West Heller established herself as an artist in 
Chicago. In 1930 a writer for the Chicago Daily News called her “the 
woman who had to paint.” She had a series of solo exhibitions in that 
city in the late 1920s and published a book of her own poetry, in which 
she herself cut the text by the intaglio method and cut each separate 
illustration on a different wood-block. This volume, Migratory Urge, 
exhibited her typical decorative, semiabstract, and highly patternized 
style. The poems had first been published in the Chicago Evening Post 
under the Japanese pseudonym “Tarika.” 

In 1932, Helen West Heller left Chicago for New York, according to 
the papers, “to seek a wider public.” She worked on the Public Works of 
Art Project and the Fine Arts Project of the W.P.A., designing murals and 
mosaics. In 1933, she exhibited at the Roosevelt Hotel with an avant- 
garde group of thirty-five artists who called themselves the “Indepen 
dent Independents,” and she also had a solo showing at Philosophy 
Hall, on the campus of Columbia University. 

In the February 1937 issue of Art Front, an organ of the radical Artists 
Union, Heller was featured in an article reprinting her answers to a 
questionnaire sent out to artists in the Mural Division of the New York 
W.P.A. concerning their theory, philosophy of art education, and tech¬ 
niques. She painted murals for the Neponsit Hospital in Brooklyn and 
spoke on mural painting at a symposium held in conjunction with the 
A.C.A. Gallery’s 1942 exhibition “Artists in the War.” She was also one of 
the signers of a call to artists and writers to convene in defense of cul 
ture against Fascism. 


In the 1940s, Heller had several solo exhibitions in New York, includ¬ 
ing one sponsored by the Artists League of America in 1948. The 
following year, the Division of Graphic Arts of the Smithsonian Institu¬ 
tion presented thirty-two of her wood-engravings. In 1947, she pub¬ 
lished the book Woodcuts, U.S.A., with an introduction by John Taylor 
Arms. 

Heller also exhibited in a number of group shows throughout her 
career, including several in Europe: at the Hagenbund in Vienna, the 
Salon d’Automne in Paris, and The Meatyards in London. Her work may 
now be seen in numerous public collections at such institutions as Bryn 
Mawr College, the Brooklyn Museum, the New York Public Library, and 
the Smithsonian Institution. An artist who generated much excitement 
and publicity in her day, Helen West Heller was receiving assistance 
from the New York Department of Welfare when she died in 1955. 

Sources 

"Exhibition in New York.” Revue du vrai et du beau A (March 1925): 20-21. 

“The Woman Who Had to Paint.” Chicago Daily News, August 13, 1930. 

"Helen Heller Leaves to Seek Wider Public.” Chicago Daily News, 

February 25, 1932. 

“Modernist at 60.” New York Evening Post, April 1933- 

“Question and Answer: Helen West Heller.” Art Front, February 1937, pp. 12-13. 

Harms, Dr. Ernest. “Helen West Heller: The Woodcutter.” Print Collectors 
Quarterly 29 (1942): 250-71. 

Reese, Albert M. American Prize Prints of the 20th Century. New York: American 
Artists Group, 1949 (pp. 81, 243). 

Obituary. New York Herald Tribune, November 30, 1955. 

Obituary. New York Times, November 30, 1955. 

Who's Who in American Art: 1940-47, 1953 


48 




Fig. 15 

Magnesium Bomb 

Helen West Heller (1885-1955) 

Woodcut, 1943 (11.7x21.2 cm) 
Signed on block with initials, signed 
and dated in pencil 


"I determine the composition and on 
this place the large forms, then, on the 
block, draw such detail as l can pre¬ 
conceive. Then, between the tool and 
the material, I begin thinking in the 
wood. ” The artist goes on to explain 
that she was particularly in terested in 
“conveying emotions through abstrac¬ 
tions. ” (Helen West Heller to Reming¬ 
ton Kellogg, April 9, 1949, Archives of 
American Art) 



XXH477A26 

Fine Prints Collection 

Prints and Photographs Division 

Library of Congress 











August Henkel 

( 1880 - 1961 ?) 

Color silkscreen: Victory> Garden 


August Henkel was born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, on July 31, 
1880. He studied at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts with 
William Merritt Chase and Thomas Anshutz. Henkel, a painter and car¬ 
toonist, had moved to Queens Village, New York, by the early 1940s. He 
was one of the signers of a call for a congress of American artists in 
defense of culture in June 1941, jointly sponsored by writers and artists 
passionately opposed to Fascism. He was a member of the Artists League 
of America and the National Serigraph Society. His work is in the per 
manent collection of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, as well as the 
Library of Congress. 

Sources 

Who’s Who in American Art: 1940-47, 1953, 1962. 


Hoyt Howard 

(dates unknown) 

Silkscreen: Johnny/ Rivers at Guadalcanal 


Hoyt Howard was active as a printmaker in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, 
at the time of his submission to the “America in the War” exhibition. 


Robert Jackson 

(dates unknown) 
Lithograph: The Camoujleurs 


Robert Jackson was active in the Los Angeles, California, area at the 
time of the “America in the War” exhibition in 1943. He studied at the 
Chouinard Art Institute with Phil Paradise for a short while. 


50 


Hans Jelinek 

(b.1910) 

Wood engraving: The Last Walk 


Hans Jelinek was born in Vienna, Austria, on August 21, 1910. He 
studied at the Wiener Kiinstgewerbeschlile and the University of Vienna. 
In Europe he taught art and descriptive geometry, illustrated scientific 
books, and did research in the psychology of art before coming to the 
United States in 1938, when Austria was invaded by Hitler. 

At first, Jelinek settled in Virginia, where he worked as a medical illus¬ 
trator. At the time of the “America in the War” exhibition, he was living 
in Richmond. The work he submitted, The Last Walk, was the seventh 
print in a series of twelve entitled “The Story of Lidice.” Along with The 
Village, The Hangman, Assassin, Destiny, The Guards, Occupation, 
Execution, Departure, The Mother, The Fire, and The End, The Last Walk 
told the story of a Nazi atrocity. Carlyle Burrows of the New York Herald 
Tribune wrote about these works, “There is no room in this artist for a 
compassionate narrative of human suffering, but only grim hatred of the 
brutal menace which devastated the little Czechoslovak village and its 
inhabitants.” Another writer, in Fort Wayne, Indiana, said about The Last 
Walk, which won first prize in the relief category in the “America in the 
War” competition, “The inhumanity' of w'ar is revived in the woodcut 
winner The Last Walkby Hans Jelinek. His interpretation of a burdened 
weary' people at the point of a bayonet is unforgettably significant.” 
Jelinek has been compared with Pieter Breughel in his ability' to pin¬ 
point the vanities and cruelties of life which, in this case, he had 
observed firsthand. 

In 1943 the New School for Social Research in New York City had a 
special exhibition of Jelinek’s Lidice series and the following year that 
same institution showed his illustrations for Down a Crooked Lane, by 
Martha Byrd Porter. Following a 1945 one-man show at the Virginia 
Museum of Fine Arts in Richmond, Hans Jelinek moved to New York to 
teach woodcut and wood-engraving at the New School and soon also 
became an assistant professor at City' College of New York. In 1973, he 
also began teaching at the National Academy School of Fine Arts. 







In 1951, the Division of Graphic Arts of the Smithsonian Institution 
devoted a show to his woodcuts. An exhibitor in many group shows 
throughout his career in the United States and abroad, Hans Jelinek won 
awards from the Tiffany Foundation in 1947 and the Library of Congress 
in 1945. He was given the Paul J. Sachs prize at the fifteenth annual 
exhibition of Boston Printmakers in 1962. 

Jelinek’s work may be seen in such collections as that of the Museum 
of Modern Art, the Victoria and Albert Museum in London, the Philadel 
phia Museum of Art, the Boston Museum of Fine Arts, the Virginia 
Museum of Fine Arts, the Munson-Williams-Proctor Institute, and the 
Alabama Institute of Technology'. 


Sources 

Freeman, Lorraine. [Review]. Ft. Wayne, Indiana, News Sentinel, October 2, 1943- 

[Review], The Journal Gazette, Ft. Wayne, Indiana, October 3, 1943. 

Burrows, Carlyle. [Review]. New York Herald Tribune, December 5, 1943- 

Ten Years oj Drawings and Prints, 1940-1950, by Hans Jelinek. New York: New 
School for Social Research, January 4-25, 1951. 

Ward, Lynd. Halts Jelinek. Society of American Graphic Artists, 1956. 

Who’s Who in American Art: 1940-80. 



Fig. 16 

The Last Walk 

Hans Jelinek, b. 1910 

Wood engraving, not dated 
(12.6x 10.2 cm) 

Signed in pencil 

“When in the beginning of the war 
the Czech village Lidice was brutally 
annihilated by the Nazis, I was horri¬ 
fied as well as desperate, feeling my 
own inability to do something about 
it. Then one night it came to me that 
an artist could also contribute to the 
bitter fight if only with a piece of 
wood and a graver. The same night l 
made all the sketches for a series of 
engravings illustrating the sad story> of 
Lidice. It took many evenings and 


nights to finish the work. Nevertheless 
I couldn't stop working until / was 
through. Then l felt a little better. 

“/ have shown these prints in sev¬ 
eral exhibitions and I hope to publish 
them someday to make them fulfill 
their task to remind people that the 
unbelievable sufferings of so many 
people should not have been in vain, 
and also should not be forgotten. ... I 
believe that a work of art can still be 
art and also carry a message to the 
people. ” (Hans Jelinek to Karl Kup, 
ca. 1944, New York Public Library) 

XXJ48A3 

Fine Prints Collection 

Prints and Photographs Division 

Library of Congress 


51 




Helen L. Johann 

(b.1901) 

Linoleum cut: Next of Kin 


Helen L. Johann was born in West Depere, Wisconsin, on May 30, 

1901. She studied at Milwaukee State Teacher’s College and received a 
bachelor of science degree from Columbia University. A teacher as well 
as a printmaker, Johann has been awarded six prizes from the Milwau¬ 
kee Art Institute and a prize for her art at the Wisconsin State Fair (in 
1957). 

Johann has exhibited also at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine 
Arts, at the Oakland Art Gallery', with the Philadelphia and Buffalo Print 
Clubs, at the National Academy of Design, and in several Library' of Con¬ 
gress group shows. She also showed at the large Artists for Victory- 
sponsored exhibition at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in 1942. The 
New York Herald Tribune (October 10, 1943) commented that Next of 
Kin, her submission to “America in the War,” “reflects a cynical phase of 
the Detroit riots” of the war era. 


Sources 

Collins, J. L. Women Artists in America, 18th Century> to the Present. Chatta¬ 
nooga: University of Tennessee, 1973- 

Who's Who in American Art: 1940-47, 1953, 1959, 1962. 


Fig. 17 

Next of Kin 

Helen L. Johann, b. 1901 

Linoleum cut, not dated 
(21.7 x 14.1 cm) 

Signed in pencil 

XXJ65A1 

Fine Prints Collection 

Prints and Photographs Division 

Library> of Congress 


52 










Mervin Jules 

(b.1912) 

Color silkscreen: Hostages 


Mervin Jules was born March 21, 1912, in Baltimore, Maryland. He 
studied at Baltimore City College and the Maryland Institute in his 
hometown, as well as for two years in New York at the New School and 
the Art Students League (with Thomas Hart Benton). Before moving 
back to New York at age twenty-five, he taught at the Baltimore Educa¬ 
tional Alliance and had a work purchased by Duncan Phillips for the 
Phillips Collection in Washington, D.C. 

After only a few months in New York, Jules was given his first one- 
man exhibition at the Hudson Walker Gallery. Critics noted the irony 
and disillusionment so evident in the socially conscious works in this 
show and pointed out how unusual they were for one so young. A 
champion of the oppressed against inhumanity and injustice, Jules ex¬ 
hibited a highly satirical painting, Tomorrow Will Be Beautiful, at the 
New York World’s Fair in 1939-40. He was one of the signers of the call 
to a congress in defense of culture against Fascism in 1941 and a con¬ 
tributor to Winter Soldiers, a book issued in conjunction with that 
conference. 

In the late 1930s and early 1940s, Mervin Jules worked on the Fine 
Arts Project of the W.P.A. in New York. He was one of the members of 
the innovative Silkscreen Group that founded the Workshop School on 
East Tenth Street in 1940. During World War II, he made posters encour¬ 
aging Americans to buy war bonds and exhibited in the Artists for Vic¬ 
tory British-American Goodwill Exhibition, as well as “America in the 
War.” 

Mervin Jules had a one man show at the Weyhe Gallery in New York 
in 1941 and, that same year, had the first of a long series of solo shows 
at the A.C.A. Gallery. In 1942, he exhibited in the A.C.A.’s “Artists in the 
War” show, and his 1945 one-man show in Washington, D.C., at the 
Whyte Gallery, included many biting commentaries related to the war, 
such as Hostages, which was Jules’s entry to “America in the War.” In 
1942 and 1945 he had two solo exhibits in Hollywood at the ACG 
Gallery. 


Mervin Jules, in addition to being a painter and printmaker, has also 
been an art educator. Following his early teaching experience in Balti¬ 
more, he taught in New York at the Fieldston School, the Museum of 
Modern Art, the War Veteran’s Art Center, and the People’s Art Center. In 
1946 he became associated with Smith College in Northampton, Massa¬ 
chusetts, where he taught until 1969. Since that time, he has been pro¬ 
fessor of art and chairman of the art department of the City College of 
New York, and he has spent many summers teaching at various other 
institutions, including the University of Michigan and the University of 
Wisconsin. 

Mervin Jules has exhibited widely in group shows all over the United 
States, winning many prizes. Recent one-man shows include those at the 
Ferdinand Roten Gallery, Baltimore (1965), and galleries in Bingham¬ 
ton, New York (1971), and Florence, Massachusetts (1979). In 1967, 

Jules was awarded two important grants, the Asian-African Study Pro¬ 
gram Grant to Japan and the Alfred Vance Churchill Foundation Grant. 

In 1973 he received the City College Medal. 

Jules’s work may be seen in such collections as those of the Metropol¬ 
itan Museum of Art, the Art Institute of Chicago, the Boston Museum of 
Fine Arts, the Portland Art Museum, Smith College, and the Tel Aviv 
Museum in Israel. 


Sources 

“Mervin Jules Showing Geese Paintings at the Hudson D. Walker Galleries.” 
Pictures on Exhibit 1 (November 1937): 32. 

Men in Jules: Exhibition of Paintings. Essay by Ruth Green Harris. New York: 
A.C.A. Gallery, January 12-25, 1941. 

Recent Paintings by Mervin Jules. Essay by Hudson D. Walker. New York: A.C.A. 
Gallery, September 27-October 16, 1943- 

Jules. Essay by Victor D’Amico. New York: A.C.A. Gallery, January' 22-Februarv 10, 
1945. 


53 




Riley, Maude. “Mervin Jules Paints with Heart and Mind.” Art Digest 19 (February 
1, 1945): 13. 

"Exhibition A.C.A. Gallery.” Pictures on Exhibit 10 (November 1947): 32-34. 

Reese, Albert M. American Prize Prints of the 20th Century). New York: American 
Artists Group, 1949 (pp. 96, 245). 

Recent Paintings: Mervin Jules. Essay by Oliver Larkin. New York: A.C.A. Gallery, 
October 15-November 3, 1951. 

Who's Who in American Art: 1940-80. 


Max Kahn 

(b.1904) 

Color lithograph: V. . .—Mail 


Max Kahn was born in Russia in 1904 and came to the United States in 
1907. He settled in Peoria, Illinois, where he received a bachelor of 
science degree from Bradley College. Kahn returned to Europe to study 
art in Paris in 1928-29. There he was a sculpture student at the ateliers 
of Antoine Bourdelle and Charles Despiau. He also studied drawing with 
Othon Friesz in Paris and, later, lithography with Frances Chapin at the 
An Institute of Chicago. Kahn worked on the W.P.A. Fine Arts Project in 
the Chicago area in the 1930s. 

Max Kahn became a lithography instructor at the Art Institute of Chi 
cago in 1944, where he remained on the faculty until 1959. From 1959 to 
1969 he taught at the University of Chicago. He has also been an art 
instructor at the John Herron Institute, the Escuela Universitaria de 
Bellas Artes in San Miguel de Allende, Mexico, and the Oxbow Summer 
School of Painting, Saugatuck, Michigan. 

Max Kahn is married to Eleanor Coen, another of the artists in the 
"America in the War” exhibition, and has had several joint exhibitions 
with her. He is one of the best-known printmakers from the Chicago 
area. He has won a large number of awards not only from Midwest insti¬ 
tutions but also in exhibitions and competitions all over the United 
States. A specialist in color lithography, he has had quite a few one man 
exhibitions since the 1940s, including shows at the Weyhe Gallery in 
New York, the Princeton Print Club, the Philadelphia Art Alliance, Pratt 


54 


Institute, and the Fairweather-Hardin Gallery in Chicago. Kahn, who not 
only pulls his own prints but also grinds his stones and inks himself, has 
works in a large number of public and private collections all over this 
country, in Canada, and in Israel. 

Sources 

Schniewind, Carl O. Color Lithos/Max Kahn. New York: Wehye Gallery, March 
6-27,1946. 

Peck, Janet. "Grease, Stone and Ink is Art in Right Hands—South Side Litho¬ 
grapher is Famed for Prints.” Chicago Sunday Tribune. March 14, 1948, part 3, 
p. 95. 

Reese. Albert M. American Prize Prints of the 20th Century. New York: American 
.Artists Group, 1949 (pp. 97, 245). 

“Coen and Kahn to Show Color Lithographs.” Philadelphia Art Alliance Bulletin 
30 (October 1951): 9. 

“Forty-five works by Max Kahn Show Why He’s Popular.” Chicago Daily News, 
November 13, 1953. 

Haydon, Harold. “Two Chicago Masters in Hometown Limelight.” Showcase, 
Chicago Sunday Times, November 22, 1970, p. 14. 




Hilda Katz 

(b. 1909) 

Linoleum cut: Freedom from Want 


Hilda Katz was born June 2, 1909, in the Bronx in New York City. She 
studied art at the New School and at the National Academy of Design, 
which gave her two awards in 1933 and 1935. In 1938 she had the first in 
a series of over twenty-five solo shows throughout her career at the Mor 
ton Gallery in New York. In the 1940s and 1950s, she was an instructor 
at the Art Students League. In 1940 she exhibited in the U.S. pavilion of 
the Venice Biennale. 

Hilda Katz was an active member of Artists for Victory during the war 
years. She not only exhibited in “America in the War” but also in the 
large Artists for Victory-sponsored exhibition at the Metropolitan 
Museum of Art in December 1942. In December 1944 she represented 
the Audobon Artists at Artists for Victory meetings. 

Katz’s contribution to “America in the War,” a linoleum cut, Freedom 
from Want, came from her own series depicting the four freedoms out¬ 
lined by President Roosevelt as a goal in a 1942 speech. It exhibits her 
typically bold, vigorous pattern quality, with emphasis on the symbolic 
value of dark tonalities. The entire “Four Freedoms” set is now owned 
by the Library' of Congress, the Jewish Museum, the Brooklyn Museum, 
the National Museum of American History, and the Colorado Springs 
Fine Arts Center. 

Throughout her career, Hilda Katz has been active in women’s art 
organizations. She exhibited from 1937 to 1952 with the New York 
Society of Women Artists. Twice, in 1945 and 1947, she was given prizes 
by the National Association of Women Artists and, in 1946, she exhibited 
in an International Exposition of Women’s Art and Industry 7 , at the Inter¬ 
national Women’s Club in England. 

Katz has been included in group exhibitions all over the LInited States 
and abroad, garnering many prizes. Solo shows in the 1950s include, 
among others, exhibitions at the Bowdoin College Art Museum, the Cali¬ 
fornia State Library 7 , the University of Maine, the Jewish Museum, and the 
Albany Institute of History and Art Print Club. The Albany Institute has 
been the recipient of an archive of Katz’s paintings, drawings, prints, and 
documentary material related to her two careers. (In addition to her 
career as a painter, Katz, under the name Hulda Weber, has also been 
acclaimed as an author and poet whose work has been included in 


many poetry magazines and anthologies, winning many prizes, primarily 
in the 1960s. She has also written a number of short stories for 
children.) 

In 1966 Hilda Katz was elected to the Executive and Professional Hall 
of Fame and in 1970 she was made a “Daughter of Mark Twain,” in 
recognition of her outstanding contribution to modern art. In 1974, she 
was awarded an honorary 7 diploma and the title letters N.D. (Nobel 
Designate) from the Accademia di Scienze, Letteri, Arti in Milan. She was 
chosen to submit paintings to the Smithsonian Institution’s National Air 
and Space Museum collection of art inspired by space. Other examples 
of her work may be found in both private and public collections, includ¬ 
ing the Franklin Delano Roosevelt Collection, the Fogg Museum at Har¬ 
vard University, three museums in Israel, and the National Museum of 
American Art. 


Sources 

“A Dramatic Talent.” New York Herald Tribune, December 25, 1938. 

Klein, Jerome. [Review]. New York Post, December 31, 1938. 

Upton, Melville. [Review], New York Sun, December 31, 1938. 

J. L., “Hilda Katz: Paintings and Drawings by a Sensitive Observer.” Art News, 
December 31, 1938. 

Devree, Howard. [Review]. New York Times, January 7 1, 1939. 

Etchings, Block Prints and Monotypes by the 3 K’s: Marguerite Kumm, Hilda 
Katz, Guynetb King. California State Library 7 , May 1953. 

“Hilda Katz in Albany.” Arts Digest 29 (June p 1955 ): 20. 

Linocuts by Hilda Katz, Young American Artist. New York: Jewish Museum, Sep¬ 
tember 9-November 1, 1956. 

Who's Who in American Art: 1940-80; Who’s Who in America: 1968-79; Who’s 
Who in the World: vols. 2, 3, 4. 




Charles Keller 

(b.1914) 

Color silkscreen: Planners for Victory 


Charles Keller, a painter, sculptor, and printmaker, was born in 
Woodmere, New York, on October 4, 1914. In 1927 he moved to New 
York City and in 1936 received a bachelor of art degree from Cornell 
University in Ithaca, New York. From 1938 to 1940 he studied at the Art 
Students League. Around this time, he became involved with several 
politically active (and sometimes radical) art organizations such as the 
Young American Artists Association, sponsored by the American Artists 
Congress and the United American Artists. This group was, at first, 
opposed to U.S. involvement in the war. Keller was also part of the Labor 
Arts Youth Club of the Young Communist League. 

Later, Keller was an active member of the Workshop of Graphic Artists 
which supplied war posters for Civil Defense and trade union purposes. 
He became director of the Victory Workshop and, in that capacity, was 
asked to represent Artists for Victory in a scheme to develop an art cen¬ 
ter in Greenwich Village. In 1942, Keller chaired a session, “Problems of 
the Young Artist,” at the A.C.A. Gallery-sponsored symposium held in 
conjunction with their “Artists in the War” exhibition. 

Charles Keller is an artist who has brought a deep social conscious¬ 
ness to his art throughout his career. During the 1940s, he w'orked as an 
assistant to Harry Sternberg on Treasury' Department murals in Doyles- 
town, Pennsylvania, and Chicago, Illinois; in the special exhibits 
department of the Museum of Modern Art; and at the Navy Training Aids 
Development Center, New York City. He has taught at Vassar College, 
the Storm King Boys School in Cornwall, New York, and Dutchess 
Community College in Poughkeepsie and in the extension program of 


Hofstra University in Hempstead, New'Jersey. 

In 1961 Charles Keller moved to Italy, where he lived and worked for 
about ten years, primarily in Rome. While there, he had one-man exhibi¬ 
tions in Rome, Allessandria, Turin, Milan, Sardinia, and Genoa. He has 
also had a solo show at the Drian Galleries in London in 1971 and four 
one-man exhibitions in New York City and New York State, one each in 
Hartford, Connecticut, and Princeton, New Jersey. A complete retrospec¬ 
tive of his work was mounted at the Herbert F. Johnson Museum of Art 
at Cornell University in 1976. 

Sources 

Usiglio, Renata. Charles Keller. Turin, Italy: La Galleria d’Arte Botero, April 2-5, 
1966. 

Gianotti, Ezio. “La Pittura di Keller.” Diogene, no. 45 (Milan) (June 1966). 

Appel, Benjamin. “Ten Years in Rome.” Charles Keller ; Paintings and Drawings. 
Princeton, N.J.: Princeton Gallery of Fine Art, April 18-May 6, 1972. 

Charles Keller. Paintings — Prints — Drawings — Sculpture. Retrospective Exhibi 
Hon. Ithaca, New York: Herbert F. Johnson Museum of Art, Cornell University, 
May 26-June 27, 1976. 

Mackin, Jeanne. “Art Meets Social Awareness.” Ithaca Journal, June 5, 1976, 
section 3- 




Dorothy Rutka Kennon 

(b. 1907) 

Aquatint and soft ground etching: Conchies 


Dorothy Rutka was born August 26, 1907, in Grand Rapids, Michigan. 
After attending the Grand Rapids public schools, she moved to Cleve¬ 
land, Ohio, where she studied at the John Huntington Polytechnic Insti¬ 
tute and graduated from the Cleveland Institute of Art in 1929. She 
traveled in Europe for seven months in 1931, after working for a short 
time as an illustrator and writer for the Bystander Magazine. She mar¬ 
ried Jack Kennon, political editor of the Cleveland News. 

A member of the Cleveland Artists Union, Dorothy Rutka Kennon had 
her first solo exhibition at the Cleveland Print Market in 1939. Although 
gaining a reputation around this time as a fine portraitist, she also began 
to draw local attention in the late 1930s because of her socially con¬ 
scious subject matter, concentrated on themes related to the condition 
of the poor during the depression. A writer for the Cleveland News 
commented, in 1938, that many people objected that Kennon’s work was 
“not very pretty,” and even termed it “propaganda,” to which Kennon 
replied that her goal was “to show people as they are.” At the time 
Kennon was working on the W.P.A. Fine Arts Project. The print she sub¬ 
mitted to “America in the War” depicts conscientious objectors. 

Kennon exhibited actively from 1929 through the mid-1960s in the 
annual area May shows held at the Cleveland Museum of Art, where she 
won many prizes. She has also been included in a number of Library of 


Congress group shows and large exhibitions in Philadelphia, Dayton, 
and Brooklyn. In 1946, a Kennon aquatint was selected as one of the 
one hundred best prints of the year by the Society of American Etchers 
in New York. In 1950, she was commissioned to paint a six-part mural 
depicting the life of St. James for the St. James Episcopal Church in her 
hometown. Additional solo shows of her work have been held at the 
Gallery 1030 and Ross Widen Gallery in Cleveland. Her work is owned 
by the Cleveland Museum of Art and the Cleveland Bar Association, 
among others. In 1965 Dorothy Kennon became Mrs. Philip Porter. 

Sources 

Bruner, Ray. “Art.” Cleveland News, July 31, 1938. 

“Cleveland Artist—No. 48: Dorothy Rutka Kennon.” Cleveland Press, October 11, 
1947. 

Bruner, Louise. “Artists.” Cleveland News, May 27, 1950. 

Kirkwood, Marie. “Color in Motion Gives Life to Dorothy Kennon Exhibition.” 
Cleveland News, March 15, 1958, p. 5. 

Who's Who in American Art: 1940-41. 


57 




Hans Kleiber 

(1887-1967) 

Etching and drvpoint: In the South Pacific 


An Austrian by nationality, Hans Kleiber was born in Cologne, Ger¬ 
many, on August 24, 1887. He came to the United States in 1900 and 
moved from the mill towns of Massachusetts to Wyoming around 1906-7 
in order to try to get into the U.S. Forestry Service. Largely a self-taught 
artist, Kleiber did study drawing and painting in New'Jersey for a very 
short time before moving West. 

Hans Kleiber began to draw' and paint the nature subjects in which he 
became a specialist in 1923 w'hile working as a timber cruiser, Forest 
Service ranger, and hunting and fishing guide in the Bighorn Mountain 
region. He constructed a makeshift printing press, read books on etch 
ing, and ordered supplies by mail in order to make his first prints. 

Kleiber established a studio at Dayton, Wyoming, close to the out¬ 
doors and to the wildlife subjects that interested him most. He had his 
first one-man exhibition in the Print Gallery at Goodspeed’s Book Shop 
in Boston in 1928 and his second—in what was to become a series of 
show's at that location—in 1930. A member of the California Print 
makers, he won their Silver Medal in 1931. 


A painter also, Hans Kleiber had a one-man exhibition of watercolors 
in 1951 at the Grand Central Galleries in New York. In that decade, he 
began to hand-tint some of his etchings with watercolor. He also 
painted in oils late in his career, in a somewhat Impressionistic style. 

Sources 

“Forester and Artist.” Boston Transcript article reproduced in a Goodspeed’s 
brochure, February/March 1928. 

Jacques, Bertha E. Hans Kleiber: Catalog (1937). 

Kettell, Russell Hawkes. “Hans Kleiber.” Hans Kleiber, Eight New Etchings. 
Boston: Goodspeed’s Book Shop, January 3-14, n.d. 

Who’s Who in American Art: 1936-37. 


58 





Fig. 18 

In the South Pacific 

Hans Kleiber (1887-1967) 

Etching and drypoint, not dated 
(17.4 x 30.5 cm) 

Signed in pencil 

XX K64 A2 

Fine Prints Collection 

Prints and Photographs Division 

Library of Congress 


59 


















Misch Harris Kohn 

(b.1916) 

Color lithograph: Survivors 


Misch Harris Kohn was born on March 26, 1916, in Kokomo, Indiana. 
He attended the John Herron Art Institute in Indiana from 1934 to 1939, 
earning a bachelor of fine arts degree and, inspired by the work of 
Kaethe Kollwitz, deciding to specialize in printmaking. In 1939 he 
studied color lithography in Chicago with Francis Chapin and Max Kahn. 
After a short stint in New York City, he returned to Chicago and became 
a part of the W.P.A. Fine Arts Project there. While on the W.P.A. for a year 
and a half, he produced paintings, wood-engravings, and color litho¬ 
graphs. He was one of the first in Chicago to do creative work in silks- 
creen, and he shared a studio for a time with Max Kahn and Eleanor 
Coen, whose prints are also included in “America in the War.” Kohn’s 
W.P.A. work, which primarily dealt with subject matter of social com¬ 
mentary, also included the illustration of a book, Pursuit of Freedom. 

In 1942, Misch Kohn taught briefly at the University of Indiana and did 
defense work in a war plant in Chicago. In 1943, he traveled to Mexico 
to work at the Taller de Grafica Popular, where he came into contact 
with Alfredo Zalce, Pablo O’Higgins, Diego Rivera, Leopoldo Mendez, 
and Jose Clemente Orozco. Orozco, in particular, had a great deal of 
influence on his work. Kohn taught wood-engraving at the Taller before 
returning to Chicago in 1945, where he worked as an illustrator for 
Fortune and several book publishers. 

The print expert Carl Zigrosser dates the emergence of Misch Kohn’s 
mature style to the large wood-engravings he began to do in 1949, in the 
belief that wood-engraving could be approached as a highly creative, 
not just a reproductive, medium. At that time, Kohn was teaching at the 
Institute of Design in Chicago, the school founded by Laszlo Moholy- 
Nagy according to Bauhaus principles. Kohn organized the Graphics 
Workshop there and became head of the Visual Design Department in 
1950, after the school affiliated with the Illinois Institute of Technology. 
Kohn remained there until 1972, when he became professor of an at the 
California State University of Hayward. 

Misch Kohn took a year off from teaching in 1952-53 to live and work 
in Paris on a John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation Fellowship. 
While there, he exhibited at the Salon du mai and with the Jeune Gra¬ 
vure printmakers. He was awarded a second Guggenheim in 1955 and a 


Ford Foundation grant for a retrospective in I960. This exhibition, 
organized by Associated American Artists, traveled all over the United 
States. In 1961, he received another Ford Foundation stipend to work at 
the Tamarind Lithography Workshop. 

Kohn has exhibited in numerous group shows throughout his career, 
winning many other important prizes. He has had a large number of 
shows devoted solely to his own art. A partial list would include the Art 
Institute of Chicago, the Taller de Grafica Popular, Indiana University at 
Bloomington, and the Philadelphia Art Alliance. His work is in collec 
tions at the Akron Art Institute, the Free Library of Philadelphia, the Bib 
liotheque nationale in Paris, the Museo de Arte Moderna in Rio de 
Janeiro, and the National Museum in Stockholm. 


Sources 

“Chicago Art Institute Exhibition of Prints and Drawings.” Pictures on Exhibit 14 
(November 1951): 58-59. 

Selz, Peter. “Three dimensional Wood Engravings: The Work of Misch Kohn.” 
Print 7 (November 1952): 37-44. 

“Misch Kohn to Show Wood Engraving.” Philadelphia Art Alliance Bulletin 32 
(March 1954): 5. 

Prints: Misch Kohn 1949-1959. New York: Weyhe Gallery, October 6-November 
4,1959. 

Peterdi, Gabor. Printmaking: Methods Old and New. New York: MacMillan & Co., 
1959 (pp. 267,270). 

Zigrosser, Carl. Misch Kohn (New York: American Federation of Arts, 1961). 

Spence, James Robert. “Misch Kohn: A Critical Study of His Printmaking.” Ph D. 
diss., University of Wisconsin, 1965. 

Misch Kohn 25 Years. Washington, D.C.: Jane Haslem Gallery, 1974. 

Who's Who in American Art. 1980. 


60 




Vincent LaBadessa 

(dates unknown) 
Lithograph: U.S. Coast Guard 


Vincent LaBadessa was born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, where he 
studied art on a scholarship at the Philadelphia Museum School of 
Industrial Art. He graduated in 1930 and had his first one-man show of 
paintings that same year. LaBadessa did not have a solo show of prints 
until 1948, when he had a lithography show at the Philadelphia Art 
Alliance. Other one-man exhibitions of LaBadessa’s work have included 
two at the Warwick Galleries in his hometown and an exhibition 
devoted to his paintings at the Chester County Art Association in West 
Chester, Pennsylvania, held in the late 1970s. 

Vincent LaBadessa has also shown work in group exhibitions at the 
Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, the Philadelphia Museum of Art, 
the first and second Philadelphia Art Festival, and the Library of 
Congress, which awarded him a Joseph Pennell prize in the 1940s. He 
also won a purchase prize at the Carnegie Institute in Pittsburgh, and his 
work may be found in such other permanent collections as the Seattle 
Museum of Art and the Atwater Kent Museum in Philadelphia. 

In addition to his career as a printmaker and painter, LaBadessa has 
also worked as a designer. To his credit are the “Italian in America” 
exhibit for the Italian Festival in Philadelphia in I960, the Costume 
Gallery of the Philadelphia Museum of Art, the LJnited States exhibit for 
the F.A.A. at the World’s Fair in Montreal, and a number of interiors for 
Philadelphia commercial and business firms. 

Sources 

“LaBadessa’s Prints in One-Man Show.” Philadelphia Art Alliance Bulletin (May 
1948): 5. 


Richard Francis Lahey 

(1893-1978) 

Etching: A Soldier’s Farewell 


Richard Francis Lahey w'as born on June 23, 1893, in Jersey City, New 
Jersey. After becoming interested in an art career in high school, he 
attended the Art Students League in New York from 1912 to 1916, study¬ 
ing with Robert Henri, Kenneth Hayes Miller, George Brant Bridgman, 
and Max Weber. During World War I, for eighteen months, he served in 
the camouflage corps of the U.S. Navy in Washington, D.C., and in Paris. 
Later, in the Second World War, he did camouflage for battle ships. 

Lahey’s career got its first boost w'hen he won the William H. Tuthill 
Purchase Prize at the Fifth Annual Watercolor Exhibition of the Art Insti¬ 
tute of Chicago in 1925. By that time, he had worked as a caricaturist and 
free-lance artist for such periodicals as the New York World Sun Maga¬ 
zine, the New York Times, Theatre Magazine, and Bookman. In the mid- 
1920s, he collaborated with poet John Farrar on a Sunday column in the 
New York Times Magazine entitled “Seeing New York.” He taught for 
one year at the Minneapolis School of Art (1921) and joined the faculty 
of the Art Students League in 1923, w'here he remained until 1935. In 
1929, Lahey was given his first one-man show, at the Whitney Studio Gal¬ 
leries, predecessor of the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York 
City. 

In the early 1930s, under the auspices of the Section of Painting and 
Sculpture of the U.S. Treasury' Department, Richard Lahey painted a 
mural for the U.S. post office in Brow'nsville, Pennsylvania. In 1935, he 
left the Art Students League to become the fifth principal of the Cor¬ 
coran School of Art, Washington, D.C., and he had a one-man show at 
the Corcoran Gallery of Art the following year. From 1937 to I960, he 
w'as professor of art at Goucher College in Maryland and he also served 
as principal emeritus of the Corcoran School. 

Other one-man exhibitions of Lahey’s w'ork include one at the D.C. 
Public Library', a series at the Kraushaar Gallery in New'York, and shows 
at the George Washington University and the University of Georgia. 
Complete retrospectives of Lahey’s work w'ere held in 1944 at the Vir¬ 
ginia Museum of Fine Arts and in 1963 at the Corcoran Gallery of Art. In 
the 1960s, Lahey w r as commissioned with his w'ife, the sculptor Carlotta 


61 




Gonzalez, to do a mural for the Hawaii Memorial in Honolulu, spon¬ 
sored by the American Battle Monuments Commission. 

An exhibitor in numerous group shows throughout his career, Lahey 
won a prize from the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, several 
from the Society of Washington Artists, and an award from the Ogunquit 
Art Association. His work may be found in the Pennsylvania Academy of 
the Fine Arts, Goucher College, the Brooklyn Museum, the Detroit Insti¬ 
tute of Arts, the Museum of Modern Art, and the U.S. Supreme Court. 

Sources 

“Richard Francis Lahey—Painter.’’ Index of 20th Century’ Artists 3, no. 2 
(November 1935): 107-9. 

“Lahey Will Head Corcoran School.” Evening Star, November 13, 1935. 

“Lahey Paintings Put on Exhibit with Etchings.” Washington Star, March 6, 1937. 

Von Keller, Beatrice. “Richard Francis Lahey, May 20-June 1944.” Richmond, 
Virginia, Museum of Fine Arts, Virginia Artists Series, no. 23 (1944): 93-96. 

Reese, Albert M. American Prize Prints of the 20th Century’. New York: American 
Artists Group, 1949 (pp. 110, 247). 

“Corcoran Honors Richard Lahey." Washington Star, May 3, 1953- 

“Lahey’s Work, Shown at the Corcoran, Makes Popular, Interesting Exhibit.” 

Times Herald (Washington, DC.), August 9, 1953. 

Richard Lahey. A Retrospective Exhibition. Essay by Hermann Warner Williams, Jr. 
Washington, D.C.: Corcoran Gallery' of Art, April 2-May 5, 1963- 

“Richard Lahey, Painter, Ex-Corcoran Principal.” Washington Post, August 3, 

1978. 

Who's Who in American Art: 1940-47, 1962. 


Anthony LaPaglia 

(dates unknown) 
Woodcut: The Home Front 


Anthony LaPaglia was active in the New York City area at the time of 
his submission to the “America in the War” exhibition. 


62 


Pietro Lazzari 

(1898-1979) 

Drypoint: Victory’Gardens 


Pietro Lazzari was born in Rome, Italy, on May 15, 1898. He studied at 
the Scuolo Communale Arti Ornementali (1912-14), the Art Museo 
(1920-22), and the Belle Arti (1922-23), all in Rome, as well as at the 
Academie des Beaux arts in Paris. Lazzari also studied decoration in Italy 
with Calcagnadoro and Bargellini from 1922 to 1925, and he worked on 
the decoration of the walls and ceilings of the Ministero della Marina in 
Rome. In addition, he assisted Depero and Marinetti in decorating the 
Cabaret del Diavoli built by Gino Gori. Lazzari won a prize from the 
Ornamental School and had a one man exhibition at the Teatro Quirino 
in Rome in 1929. 

After coming to the Linked States, Lazzari worked on the Public Works 
of Art Project in New York City' in the mid 1930s. He participated in 
several national competitions sponsored by the Section of Fine Arts of 
the U.S. Treasury' Department during the depression, winning commis¬ 
sions for post office decorations in Jasper, Florida, and Brevard and San¬ 
ford, North Carolina. Also a sculptor, Lazzari executed a bronze bust of 
Eleanor Roosevelt, which is in the collection of the Roosevelt Library in 
Hyde Park, New York. 

Pietro Lazzari has participated in many one-man and group exhibi¬ 
tions in this country, beginning with his 1926 solo show at the New 
Gallery in New York City. He has been a part of exhibitions held in such 
diverse places as the Art Institute of Chicago, the Corcoran Gallery' of Art 
in Washington, D.C., and the Betty' Parsons Gallery in New York. Lazzari 
also exhibited abroad: in Venice in 1948 and at the Musee nationale 
dart moderne in Paris in 1954. 

During his career, Pietro Lazzari executed illustrations for both for¬ 
eign and American publications, such as the Italian newspaper II 
Messagero and the New York World Sun Magazine. He illustrated a book 
entitled Washington Is Wonderful. In 1950 lazzari won a Fulbright 
Fellowship. From 1943-48 he was an instructor in art at American Uni¬ 
versity 7 , Washington, D.C., and he was head of the art department at 
Dunbarton College of the Holy Cross, 1949-50. He was also an instruc¬ 
tor for the Graduate School of the U.S. Department of Agriculture. 





Pietro Lazzari’s work is in numerous public collections, including 
Howard University, the Honolulu Academy of Fine Arts, the Truman 
Library, and the San Francisco Museum of An. 

Sources 

XX'bo’s Who in American Art. 1940-47, 1953, 1966. 



Fig. 19 

Victory Gardens 

Pietro Lazzari (1898-1979) 

Drypoint, not dated (18.9 x 11 cm) 
Signed in pencil 

'‘As' for my husband’s submission for 
the Artists for Victory show, he simply 
depicted the reality of the Victory 
garden as we were then experiencing 
it. We were new to Washington then, 
and living in a small tourist ‘ home’ in 
East Falls Church. The premises 
belonged to a retiree from the postal 
service. He spent long hours in his 
vegetable garden. One day my hus¬ 
band found him shelling his home¬ 
grown peas. The drypoint Victory 
Garden was thus inspired. ” (Evelyn 
Lazzari to Ellen G. Landau, February 
27, 1982) 

XX L432A1 

Fine Prints Collection 

Prints and Photographs Division 

Library of Congress 
















Joseph LeBoit 

(b.1907) 

Woodcut: Herrenvolk 


Joseph LeBoit, a painter and printmaker, was born in New York, New 
York, on November 23, 1907. He studied at the College of the City of 
New York, where he earned a bachelor of arts degree, and at the Art Stu 
dents League, with famed Regionalist painter Thomas Hart Benton. Join 
ing the Graphic Division of the New York W.P.A. Fine Arts Project in 
1938, he became part of its innovative silkscreen unit. LeBoit had a one- 
man exhibition at the A.C.A. Gallery in 1946 and worked in the forties as 
a staff artist for the periodical PM. 

With the outbreak of World War II, Joseph LeBoit became a politically 
active member of the New York art community. In 1941 he was elected 
corresponding secretary of the Artists Societies for National Defense. 

Present at the January' 1942 organizational meeting of the Artists 
Council for Victory, he became one of the directors of Artists for Victory', 
Inc., when these other organizations merged to form it. 

Elected corresponding secretary' of Artists for Victory, Inc., in March 
1942, LeBoit also served as chairman of the standing committee on 
promotions and programs. In this capacity, he serv ed as director of the 
“America in the War” exhibition and was responsible for the brochure 
announcing the competition, the formulation of the rules and regula¬ 
tions governing the show, the suggested topics for artists’ submissions, 
and the arrangement of the show’s presentation at twenty-six museums 
all over the country. 

Joseph LeBoit also exhibited in the A.C.A. Gallery’s 1942 “Artists in the 
War” exhibition, and he delivered the conference report in a sympo¬ 
sium associated with that show. He was an active union member of the 
United American Artists. 

Another example of LeBoit’s work is in the collection of the National 
Museum of American Art of the Smithsonian Institution. 


Sources 

LeBoit, Joseph and Hyman Warsager. “The Graphic Project: Revival of Printmak¬ 
ing.” Art Front 3 (December 1937): 9. 

Who’s Who in American Art: 1940-47. 


64 


Alicia Legg 

(b.1915) 

Aquatint: Hopeful 


Alicia Legg was born in 1915. She studied at the Art Students League in 
New York with Robert Brackman. She also learned printmaking tech 
niques from Harry Sternberg and Will Barnet, two other artists in the 
“America in the War” exhibition. In the early 1940s, Legg had her work 
in local exhibitions near Hackensack, New Jersey, her home, winning a 
prize at the Montclair Museum. 

During the 1940s, Alicia Legg began working in the library' of the 
Museum of Modern Art in New York City. She eventually worked her way 
up to a position as associate curator in the department of painting and 
sculpture, a position which she still holds today. In recent years, she 
took part in a course given at the New School in New York City entitled 
“Behind the Scenes with the Art People” (1978) and, in her curatorial 
capacity, she has lately edited a number of important Museum of Mod¬ 
ern Art publications, among them The Sculpture of Matisse (1972), 
Painting and Sculpture in the Museum of Modern Art with Selected 
Works on Paper: A Catalog ( 1977), and Sol Lewitt (1978). She has not 
practiced as an artist herself for many years. 





Beatrice S. Levy 

(1892—?) 

Aquatint (color): River of Blood 


Beatrice S. Levy was born in Chicago, Illinois, on April 3, 1892. She 
studied at the Art Institute of Chicago, and with Charles Hawthorne and 
Vojtech Preissig. She had her first solo exhibition in New York in 1916 
and had a one-person show in Boston, at Goodspeed’s Book Shop, in 
1924. In 1932, the Division of Graphic Arts of the Smithsonian Institu¬ 
tion gave Levy an exhibition of etchings, drypoints, and prints in color. 
The most recent exhibition devoted to her work took place at the Uni¬ 
versity of New r Mexico in 1937. 

Beatrice Levy has taken pan in numerous group shows at such institu¬ 
tions as the Art Institute of Chicago, the Pennsylvania Academy of the 
Fine Arts, and the Chicago Society of Etchers. In 1932 and 1933, her 
works were selected for Fifty' Prints of the Year. Among the many other 
group exhibitions in which she has taken part are several Pennell shows 
at the Library of Congress, and a traveling ceramic exhibit in Yokohama, 
Japan. 

In the 1920s, Levy experimented extensively with different methods of 
making color aquatints, using three plates for each impression. A painter 
and teacher as well as a graphic artist, for a year and a half during World 
War II she did war work as a draftsman. 

Beatrice Levy’s works are part of the permanent collections of such 
museums as the Chicago Municipal Collection, the Bibliotheque 
nationale in Paris, the Art Institute of Chicago, the Smithsonian Institu 
tion, and the La Jolla, California, Art Center. In the early 1960s Levy 
moved from the Chicago area to La Jolla. 

Sources 

Mechlin, Leila. [Review], The Washington Star, February 17, 1922. 

“The Robert Rice Jenkins Prize to Beatrice Levy for ‘Jackson Park Beach 
Nocturne,”’ Chicago Art Institute Bulletin 17 (March 1923): 29. 

“Notes about Artists.” Chicago Evening Post, December 27, 1927. 

Collins, J. L. Women Artists in America, 18th Century to the Present. Chattanooga: 
University of Tennessee, 1973- 

Who's Who in American Art: 1940-47, 1953, 1962, 1966. 


Margaret Lowengrund 

(1905-1957) 

Lithograph: The Atlantic Charter 


Margaret Lowengrund, a painter and printmaker, was born in Phila¬ 
delphia, Pennsylvania, on August 24, 1905. Her father was a sculptor. 
Low'engrund studied at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, the 
Philadelphia Graphic Sketch Club, and the Art Students League of New 
York with Joseph Pennell. She traveled to Europe in the 1920s, where 
she studied at the London County Council School of Arts and Crafts w'ith 
A. S. Hartrick, a friend of Pennell’s, and in Paris with Polish painter Leo¬ 
pold Gottlieb and French abstractionist Andre L’Hote. 

Lowengrund exhibited at the Salon d’automne in Paris in 1928. While 
in England, she did sketches for the London Daily Express and the Lon 
don Graphic and Bystander. Two of her lithographs were purchased by 
Campbell Dodson for the British Museum while she was still a student. 
Hartrick once remarked that, “Joe Pennell sent [Lowengrund] to my 
workroom in London as an example of American wit, strength and truth. 
I found Margaret Lowengrund a genuine artist from the very beginning.” 
(Archives of American Art, Washington, D.C.). 

In the 1930s and 1940s, Lowengrund, now the wife of newsman 
Joseph Lilly, was active in the American Artists Congress, the Artists 
Union, and An American Group. Her work was chosen for Fifty' Prints of 
the Year in 1932, 1934, and 1937. Three of her paintings of aircraft 
industry subjects were purchased during World War II by the Office of 
Emergency Management (O.E.M.) from an O.E.M. sponsored competi¬ 
tion to record defense and war activities. 

Margaret Lowengrund taught at the American Artists School of New 
York and ran a workshop in color lithography at the New School. She 
was commissioned by the Grace Lines to do a series of paintings in Peru 
and by the Royal Netherlands Line to do similar work in Venezuela. She 
also painted murals for the New York Labor Temple and sketched for 
Paramount News at the first and second sedition trials in New York City. 
(Paramount News made a movie on the subject of her court drawings.) 
For many years, Lowengrund did a daily column for the New York Post 
entitled “Sketches about Town.” She also drew for the Philadelphia 
Ledger and illustrated an edition of Sinclair Lewis’s Main Street, edited 
by Carl Van Doren. 


65 





During her varied career, Lowengrund held several important posi 
tions in the New York art world. She was an associate editor of Art 
Digest, 1948-50, and registrar and assistant director of the National 
Academy of Design School of Fine Arts, 1950-51. She also served as 
codirector of the Pratt Contemporary' Graphic Art Center, which she 
founded with several partners. From 1951 until her death, Margaret 
Lowengrund was director of the Contemporaries Gallery. 

Among the solo exhibitions to Lowengrund’s credit are shows at the 
KleemanThorman Galleries, New York (1928), the Baltimore Museum 
of Art, the Smithsonian Institution’s Division of Graphic Arts (1954), the 
Grace Horne Galleries in Boston, and the A.C.A. Gallery. The National 
Association of Women Artists named a memorial prize after her. 

Sources 

[Review, Kleeman Thorman Galleries Exhibition]. New York Evening Post, 
November 10, 1928. 

"Exhibition, New York.” Pictures on Exhibit6 (April 1945): 37. 

"Mrs. Lowengrund, Lithographer Here.” New York Times, November 21, 1957, 
p. 33. 

Who's Who in American Art: 1937, 1953- 


66 


Louis Lozowick 

(1892-1973) 

Lithograph: Granaries of Democracy 


Louis Lozowick was born on December 10, 1892, in Ludvinovka, the 
likraine. He moved to Kiev in 1904 and attended the Kiev Art School 
until he emigrated from Russia to the United States two years later. Here 
he studied at the National Academy of Design, 1915-17, with Leon Kroll 
and Emil Carlsen. He also graduated Phi Beta Kappa from Ohio State 
University in 1918. During World War I, he served in the armed forces in 
Europe. 

After the war, Lozowick stayed in Berlin, where he became involved 
with the Novembergruppe of artists and did his first lithographs. He met 
Constructivist El Lissitzky there and on a trip to Russia became 
acquainted with other Russian revolutionary' artists, Kasimir Malevich, 
Ivan Puni, and Vladimir Tatlin. Lozowick attended the Freidrich-Williams 
Gymnasium and the Free Academy in Berlin and began the urban 
studies concentrating on skyscrapers, bridges, and machinery, influ¬ 
enced by Cubism and Constructivism, for which he has become famous. 
He had two one-man exhibitions in Berlin, in 1922 at the Twaddy 
Gallery'and the following fall at Alfred Heller’s. Before leaving Europe, 
he also attended classes at the Sorbonne. 

Louis Lozowick returned to the Linited States in 1924 and became 
involved in innovative stage design, doing sets for Georg Kaiser’s Gas, 
presented at the Goodman Theater in Chicago. His lectures on modern 
Russian art were published by the Societe anonyme in 1925, and he 
exhibited with that avant garde group the following year. A little later, 
he published a book on Modern Russian Art and, in 1930, was coauthor 
of Voices of October, a study of the place of art in revolutionary' Russia. 
After his fourth visit to Russia in 1932, he wrote a study of the Far 
Eastern Soviet Republics. 

Lozowick had his first one-man show in the United States in 1926 at 
J.B. Neumann’s New Art Circle. The show concentrated on subjects 
related to cities and machine ornamentation, done in a Precisionist 
style. In 1927, Lozowick wrote the introduction to the Machine Age 
Exposition at Steinway Hall and two years later began to exhibit at 
Wey'he Gallery. He continued to exhibit in Europe as well, most notably 
at the famous “New Objectivity” show in Mannheim in 1925. In 1928, 




there were exhibitions devoted solely to Lozowick’s work in Paris and at 
the Museum of Western Art in Moscow. 

On the executive board of the radical publication New Masses begin¬ 
ning in 1926, Lozowick was also active in the American Artists Congress 
in the early years of the Depression. He wrote an article on revolution¬ 
ary art for the Artists Union publication, Art Front, in which he advo¬ 
cated that artists become critics of the status quo and aim their art at the 
working classes. In 1933-34 he joined both the graphic and mural divi¬ 
sions of the W.P.A. and painted a mural for the U.S. post office in New 
York City. 

During the war years, Lozowick remained politically active. He was 
one of the signers of the call to artists to assemble in defense of culture 
against Fascism in 1941 and exhibited in the show that was held in con¬ 
junction with this congress. He was a discussant on the congress’s panel, 
“A Fascist World and Freedom of Expression.” Again in 1942 he was a 
featured speaker on a panel concerning the arts in wartime sponsored 
by the Congress of Soviet American Friendship. 

Louis Lozowick moved to South Orange, New Jersey, in 1943. From 
the 1940s through the 1960s, he participated in many group exhibitions, 
including the seminal ‘‘American Realists and Magic Realists” at the 
Museum of Modern Art in 1943- The Division of Graphic Arts of the 
Smithsonian Institution held a one-man show of his work in Washing¬ 
ton, D.C., in 1950. There were a number of solo presentations of his 
work in the last two decades of his life, as well as an important series of 
posthumous exhibitions. 

In addition to his publications on Russian art, Lozowick wrote A 
Treasury of Drawings, 100 Contemporary American Jewish Painters 
and Sculptors, and a book on the art of William Gropper. He was a con¬ 
tributor to such magazines as The Nation, Menorah Journal, Theatre 
Arts, and Transition. His work may be seen in the collections of the 
Museum of Modern Art, the New York Public Library, the Museum of 
Western Art in Moscow, and the National Museum of American Art, 
Washington, D.C., which has an in-depth selection of his graphic oeuvre. 


Sources 


Lozowick, Louis. “Lithography: Abstraction and Realism.” Space 1 (March 1930): 
31-33. 


Abstraction and Realism: 1923-43, Paintings, Drawings and Lithographs of 
Louis Lozowick. Essay by William C. Lipke. Burlington, Vt.: Robert Hull Fleming 
Museum, University of Vermont, 1971. 

Louis Lozowick: Lithographs. Essay by Elke M. Solomon. New York: Whitney 
Museum of American Art, 1972-73- 

Obituary. New York Times. September 10, 1973, p. 24. 

Singer, Esther Forman. “The Lithography of Louis Lozowick.” American Artist 37 
(November 1973): 36-40. 

Louis Lozowick. Lithographs and Drawings. Newark, New Jersey: Newwark Public 
Library, 1972-73. 

Louis Lozowick. Drawings and Lithographs. Essay by Janet A. Flint. Washington, 

D C.: National Collection of Fine Arts, 1975. 

Louis Lozowick’s New York. New York: Associated American Artists, January 5-31, 
1976. 


Louis Lozowick: American Precisionist Retrospective. Essay by John Bowlt. Long 
Beach, Calif.: Long Beach Museum of Art, 1978. 

Louis Lozowick (1892-1973). Works in the Precisionist Manner. New York: 
Hirschl and Adler Galleries, Inc., 1980. 


67 



Abel Franklin McAllister 

(b.1906) 

Wood engraving: Convalescent Craftsmen 


Abel Franklin McAllister was born September 9, 1906, in Herrington, 
Kansas. He studied with Edmund Giesbert and went to graduate school 
at the University of Chicago. A member of the Renaissance Society of the 
University of Chicago, he received honorable mention in the Union 
League Club of Chicago’s competition for young Chicago artists in 1929. 

At the time of the “America in the War” exhibition, Abel McAllister 
was still a resident of Chicago. From the inscription on his submission, 
Convalescent Craftsman—' “American Red Cross Arts and Skills Program 
in Military Hospitals”—it can be inferred that he was involved in Red 
Cross hospital work during World War II. 

Sources 

Who’s Who in American Art: 1937. 


68 


John Ward McClellan 

(b.1908) 

Lithograph: The Imprisoned Outcasts 


John Ward McClellan was born in 1908. At the time of the “America in 
the War” exhibition, he lived in Woodstock, New York, and had attained 
the rank of corporal in the U.S. armed services. 

During his career as an artist, John Ward McClellan participated in a 
number of group shows, including one at the Library of Congress, which 
purchased one of his works through its Joseph Pennell fund, and 
another at the Isaac Delgado Museum of Art in New Orleans, which 
included McClellan in its 54th Annual, held in 1955. The only one-man 
show by McClellan which is documented was held in 1938 at the Grant 
Studios in New York City. Critic Howard Devree of the New York Times 
lauded McClellan’s “powerful draftsmanship.” 

Sources 

Devree, Howard. [Review’, Grant Studios Exhibition]. Neiv York Times, 

December 18, 1938. 






Florence White McClung 

(1896-?) 

Lithograph: Home Front 


Florence White McClung was born July 12, 1896, in St. Louis, Missouri. 
She studied at Southern Methodist LIniversity, where she earned bache¬ 
lor's degrees of arts and science in education, at Texas State College for 
Women, at Colorado College, in Taos, New Mexico, and with artists 
Adolph Dehn, Alexander Hogue, Frank Reaugh, Richard Howard, and 
Frank Klepper. She herself was an instructor in drawing, painting, batik, 
and art history at Trinity University, Waxahachie, Texas, from 1928 to 
1942. 

McClung has been given numerous solo exhibitions in Texas, Louisi¬ 
ana, and Alabama, and she also had a one-person show in England in 
1946. Notable among the many group shows in which she participated 
in the 1930s and 1940s are the Pan American Exposition in Dallas, Texas 
(1937), and several shows each at the National Academy of Design, the 
Library of Congress, and the San Francisco Museum of Art. 


Florence McClung was awarded prizes for her art by the Dallas 
Alliance of Art, the National Association of Women Artists, and in the 
competition Pepsi Cola sponsored, organized by Artists for Victory, in 
1942. Her work may be seen in the permanent collections of such 
museums as the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Dallas Museum of Fine 
Arts, the Mint Museum of Art, and the Isaac Delgado Museum in New 
Orleans. 


Sources 

Collins, J. L. Women Artists in America, 18th Century> to the Present. Chatta¬ 
nooga: University of Tennessee, 1973- 

Who’s Who in American Art: 1940-47, 1953, 1962. 




Alexander Samuel MacLeod 

(1888—?) 

Lithograph: Havoc in Hawaii 


Alexander Samuel MacLeod was born April 12, 1888, on Prince Edward 
Island in Canada. After studying at McGill University, he came to the 
United States in 1910 and studied at the California School of Design. 
During World War I, he was an engineer with the American Expedition 
ary Forces in France, doing mapping and panoramic sketching. 

In 1921 Alexander MacLeod moved to Honolulu, where he became 
one of Hawaii’s best-known artists. In 1928 the Honolulu Academy of 
Arts gave him a comprehensive exhibition of paintings and prints. He 
also had a one-man show at that same institution in 1931 (comprising 
war sketches from France, 1917-18) and 1940. Other solo showings in 
the 1930s and 1940s included one at the California Palace of the Legion 
of Honor in San Francisco, three at S. & G. Gump Galleries, Waikiki, one 
at Stanford University, another at the Vancouver Art Gallery, a show at 
the Lftiiversity of Hawaii, and his only one-man exhibition in the East, at 
the Ferargil Galleries in New York in 1934. 

During World War II, MacLeod again worked with the U.S. Army Engi¬ 
neers, eventually becoming head of the Graphic Presentation Section, 
Adjutant General Division, Fort Shafter. An article in the London Studio 
(May 1945) notes that MacLeod was at the site of the bombing of Pearl 
Harbor, with his watercolors, at the same time as the first photographers 
arrived. MacLeod published his own graphic account of the Japanese 
attack in The Spirit of Hawaii: Before and After Pearl Harbor (New 
York: Harper and Brothers, 1943). A painting by MacLeod of a bombed 
hangar at an army airfield was purchased by the Office of Emergency 
Management out of a competition to record defense and war activities, 
held at the beginning of the U.S. involvement in World War II. 


MacLeod has exhibited at museums and with art associations all over 
the United States. Just a few of the group shows to his credit include 
those held at the Museum of Modern Art, the Pennsylvania Academy of 
the Fine Arts, the New York World’s Fair (1939-40), and the San Fran¬ 
cisco Museum of Art. He also exhibited lithographs in 1942 at the 
National Art Gallery in Sydney, Australia. 

Works by Alexander Samuel MacLeod may be seen in the permanent 
collections of many museums, for instance, the National Gallery of Art, 
the Honolulu Academy of Arts, and the Seattle Art Museum. MacLeod has 
also illustrated several other books with Hawaiian subject matter, includ¬ 
ing three written by Clifford Gessler and one by Erna Fergusson. 


Sources 

Gessler, Clifford. “The Art of A.S. MacLeod.” Studio 93 (May 1927): 334-36. 

“Hawaiian Painter Wins Honolulu Prize.” Art Digest! (September 1928): 20. 

“MacLeod of Honolulu Has N.Y. Show.” Art Digests (July 1, 1934): 24. 

MacLeod, Alexander Samuel. “The Fisherfolk of Hawaii’s Shores.” Asia 41 (Sep¬ 
tember 1941): 490-91. 

MacLeod, Alexander Samuel. “Hawaii in Wartime, Sketches.” Asia 42 (July 1942): 
412-13. 

Hall, W.S. "A.S. MacLeod, of Hawaii.” Studio 129 (May 1945): 161-64. 


70 





Fig. 20 

Havoc in Hawaii 

Alexander Samuel MacLeod, b. 1888 

Lithograph, not dated 
(43-6 x 35.4 cm) 

Signed in pencil 

XX Ml66 B7 

Fine Prints Collection 

Prints and Photographs Division 

Library> of Congress 


71 











J. Jay McVicker 

(b. 1911) 

Aquatint: Arc Welder 


J. Jay McVicker, a painter, printmaker, and sculptor, was born October 
18, 1911, in Vici, Oklahoma. He studied at Oklahoma State University, 
where he earned bachelor’s and master’s degrees in the arts. From 1941 
to 1977, he himself taught at that institution. During part of this time, he 
served as chairman of the an department. 

McVicker has had a number of one-man exhibitions throughout his 
active career. These solo showings, which began in 1940 and continue 
through the present, have been held at such locations as Esther’s Alley 
Gallery in Bethesda, Maryland; the Fred Jones Memorial Gallery in 
Norman, Oklahoma; and the Division of Graphic Arts of the U.S. 

National Museum, Smithsonian Institution. At the time of the last-named 
(1945), McVicker was a lieutenant in the U.S. Navy. 

J. Jay McVicker has won many artistic awards, including prizes from 
the Washington Watercolor Club, the Library' of Congress, and the 
Wichita Arts Association. Some of the numerous group shows in which 
he has participated have been held at the National Academy of Design, 


the Downtown Gallery in New York City, the Salon des realities nou- 
velles in Paris, the Galleria Origine in Rome, and the American/Japanese 
Print Exhibition in Tokyo. His work may be seen in over twenty major 
public collections all over the United States. The realistic subject matter 
of his prints, for the most part, strongly reflects life in the Southwest. His 
most recent paintings, however, done in acrylic media, are of the color 
field type. 

Sources 

Reese, Albert M. American Prize Prints of the 20th Century. New York: American 
Artists Group, 1949 (pp. 141, 250). 

“Prints of the Past as Fresh as Today.” Washington Post, Weekend section, March 
2, 1979. 

Who's Who in American Art. 1940-47 through 1980. 


72 





Fig. 21 

Arc Welder 

J. Jay McVicker, b. 1911 

Aquatint, not dated (40.1 x 27.5 cm ) 
2/50, signed in pencil 


"Regarding my print Arc Welder, it 
teas produced in the spring of 1943- 
What is non> the Stillwater Municipal 
Airport was considerably enlarged at 
that time to accommodate basic flight 
instruction. Arc Welder represents one 
of the many episodes that occurred 
on a night shift of the construction 
project. ” (J. Jay McVicker to Ellen G. 
Landau, March 3, 1982) 


XX Ml 77 B3 

Fine Prints Collection 

Prints and Photographs Division 

Library> of Congress 


73 



Jack Markow 

(b.1905) 

Lithograph: Nazi Supermen 


Jack Markow, a painter, cartoonist, and lithographer, was born January 
23, 1905, in London, England. He came to the United States at age two 
and grew up in New York City. He studied at the Art Students League 
and with Boardman Robinson, Richard Lahey, and Walter Jack Duncan, 
from 1922 to 1929. Markow had his first one-man show in 1937 at the 
A.C.A. Gallery in New York. Subsequent solo exhibitions of his work 
have been held at the School of Visual Arts, New York (1957), and the 
Hudson Guild Gallery' (1958). 

During the 1930s, Jack Markow worked in New York on the Fine Arts 
Project of the W.P.A. Each year from 1933 to 1938, one of his works was 
chosen for Fifty'American Prints of the Year. Beginning in 1928, he 
began publishing cartoons in such prominent magazines as the Neiv 
Yorker, the Saturday Review, the Saturday Evening Post, Collier’s, Life, 
Holiday, Argosy, True, Redbook, and McCall’s. He was an instructor in 
drawing and cartooning at the School of Visual Arts from 1947 to 1953- 
During part of this time (1951-53) he worked as cartoon editor of 
Argosy’. 

An active member of the Magazine Cartoonists Guild, Markow served 
on its executive board, 1968-72. He has written and illustrated several 
books on cartooning, including Drawing and Selling Cartoons (1955), 
Drawing Funny Pictures (1970), and Drawing Comic Strips ( 1972), as 
well as preparing the Cartoonists and Gag Writers Handbook for the 
Writer’s Digest in 1967. 

Among the group exhibitions in which Markow has participated are 
shows at the Pennsy'lvania Academy of the Fine Arts, the Art Institute of 
Chicago, the Philadelphia Sketch Club, the Princeton Print Club, the 
Whitney Museum of American Art, and the National Academy of Design. 
His prints and paintings are in the collections of the Metropolitan 
Museum of Art, the Brooklyn Museum, the University' of Georgia, Hunter 
College, the Brooklyn and Queensboro Public Libraries, and the City' 
College of New York. 


74 


Sources 


Reese, Albert M. American Prize Prints of the 20th Century. New York: American 
Artists Group, 1949 (pp. 135, 249). 

Who's Who in American Art: 1940-80. 


Merritt Mauzey 

(1898-1973) 

Lithograph: My Brother’s Keeper 


Merritt Mauzey was born November 16, 1898, on a cotton farm in Clif¬ 
ton, Texas, the youngest of nine children. He grew up on a similar farm 
near Sweetwater, in the west Texas cattle country'. For a short time, as a 
teenager, he took a correspondence course in cartoon illustrating from 
the Omaha Nebraska Fine Art Institute. Married at age eighteen, he 
became a sharecropper on a 160-acre cotton farm until 1921, when he 
went to Sweetwater to work a cotton gin. 

In 1926, Mauzey moved his family to Dallas, where he did clerical 
work for a cotton export firm. In Dallas, he attended art classes at the 
public night school, where he studied etching with Frank Klepper and 
drawing with John Knott. He made his first print there in 1934, and in 
1938 he became one of the charter members of the Lone Star 
Printmakers. 

In the early 1930s, Mauzey sold some oil paintings to be used as illus¬ 
trations in magazines and newspapers such as Farm and Ranch and the 
Dallas Morning News. He first exhibited his work at the Texas Centen¬ 
nial in 1936. He had his first solo show in New York in 1939 at the Del¬ 
phic Studios and also exhibited at the New York World’s Fair that year. 

Mauzey was discovered in 1940 by Carl Zigrosser who, under the aus¬ 
pices of the Guggenheim Foundation, was engaged in making a national 
survey of printmaking. Around this time, Mauzey became interested in 
lithography. He had to work on transfer paper and send his designs to 
Philadelphia to be printed, since he had no access to a lithography 
press. This being unsatisfactory, he purchased instruction books, 
equipment, and stones, and in 1942 set up one of the first presses in 
Texas. After winning a Guggenheim Fellowship in 1947 to explore 





lithography and make prints about Texas life, he took time off from his 
job at the Firestone Tire and Rubber Company in Dallas to study litho¬ 
graphy, for several months each, under Lawrence Barrett at the Colorado 
Springs Fine Arts Center and George Miller in New York City. In the 
1940s he had a number of one-man exhibitions of his lithographs, 
including a show organized by the Elisabet Ney Museum in Austin 
(1942) that traveled all over Texas and another at the Grand Central Art 
Galleries in New York (1947), as well as one at the Galeria de Art Mexi- 
cano in Mexico City. 

Merritt Mauzey is best known for prints depicting aspects of the cotton 
industry, from planting to export, and for the series of children’s books 
he wrote and illustrated in the 1950s and 1960s. These include Cotton 
Farm Boy, Texas Ranch Boy, Oilfield Boy, Rice Boy, Rubber Boy, and Salt 
Boy. 

After retiring from Firestone in 1962, he traveled extensively all over 
the world. During his lifetime, Merritt Mauzey exhibited in numerous 
group shows, including six overseas tours, and won twenty-seven prizes. 
His one-man shows totaled more than thirty. A number of the museums 
which own his work have in-depth collections. These include the New 
Britain Museum of American Art, the National Museum of American Art, 
and the University of Houston. In 1972, a catalog was published of the 
Merritt Mauzey collection in the library of the University of Southern 
Mississippi. 


Sources 


Zigrosser, Carl. “Merritt Mauzey.” In The Artist in America: 24 Close-Ups of 
Contemporary Printmakers. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1942. 

Morgan, Ruth. “Sermons on Stone: The Lithographs of Merritt Mauzey.” South¬ 
west Review of Literature (Spring 1947): 163-69. 

Reese, Albert M. American Prize Prints of the 20th Century. New York: American 
Artists Group, 1949 (pp. 138, 249-50). 

Putcamp, Luise, Jr. “Sermon on Stones.” Town North Magazine, 1953- 

Mauzey, Merritt. “Lithography as a Fine Art.” Today’s Art 3, no. 9 (October 1955). 

Tracy, Warren. The Catalog of the Merritt Mauzey Collection in the Library of the 
University of Southern Mississippi. Hattiesburg, Miss.: Univ. of Southern Miss., 
1972. 

Weaver, Gordon, ed. An Artist's Notebook: The Life and Art of Merritt Mauzey. 
Memphis: Memphis State University Press, 1979. 

V."ho’s Who in American Art: 1940-47, 1966. 


75 



Roderick Fletcher Mead 

(1900-1972) 

Copper engraving: The Voice of Hope in the Dawn 


Roderick Fletcher Mead was born in South Orange, New Jersey, on 
June 25, 1900. He studied at the Yale School of Fine Arts, the Grand Cen 
tral Art School, and the Art Students League. Mead studied painting with 
George Luks, W.C. Smith, and George Ennis and printmaking with 
William Stanley Hayter at Atelier 17 in Paris. In Europe, he became a 
member of the Societe des independents de Paris and exhibited in the 
Salon de mai and with other Atelier 17 artists at the Paris Exposition 
internationale de graveurs contemporains, as well as with this group in 
Brussels, Rome, and Honolulu and at several South American museums. 

By 1943 Mead had moved from New Jersey to Carlsbad in the Pecos 
Valley of New Mexico. He has had one-man exhibitions at the California 
Palace of the Legion of Honor, the Columbus Gallery' of Fine Arts, the 
Museum of New Mexico, the University of New Mexico, the University of 
Maine, the University of Arkansas, the University of Oregon, the Louis¬ 
ville Art Center, and the Bonestell and George Binet galleries in New 
York City. In the 1970s, the Museum of the Southwest and the Roswell 
Museum and Art Center both gave him complete retrospectives. 

During his career, Mead was involved in a large number of group 
exhibitions and he was awarded prizes from the Societe des beaux arts, 
Lorraine, France; the Northwest Printmakers; the Library of Congress; the 
Dallas Museum of Fine Arts; and Texas Western College. His work may 
be seen in the permanent collections of many museums in the Linked 
States as well as in Paris, London, and Tel-Aviv. 


Sources 

Morang, Alfred. “Roderick Mead, Painter with Clear Vision.” Palacio 53 (May 
1946): 125. 

Reese, Albert M. American Prize Prints of the 20th Century /. New York: American 
Artists Group, 1949 (pp. 142, 250). 

“Roderick Fletcher Mead at the George Binet Gallery." Pictures on Exhibit 13 
(April 1951): 20-21. 

B.K. “Roderick Mead.” Art Digest 25 (April 1, 1951): 19-20. 

Reese, Albert M. “Roderick Mead.” New Mexico Quarterly (1952): 70-74. 

Roderick Mead 1900-1972: A Retrospective Exhibition. Midland, Texas: Museum 
of the Southwest, 1972. 

Roderick Mead Retrospective. New Mexico: Roswell Museum and Art Center, 
December 12, 1973-January 9, 1974. 

Who’s Who in American Art: 1953, 1962. 


76 





Fig. 22 

The Voice of Hope in the Dawn 

Roderick Fletcher Mead (1900-1972) 


Copper engraving, 1943 
(20.2 x 25.1 cm) 

3/40, signed and dated in pencil 

XX M4 79 A3 

Fine Prints Collection 

Prints and Photographs Division 

Library' of Congress 


77 






































































Leo John Meissner 

(1895-1977) 

Wood engraving: War Bulletins 


Leo John Meissner was born in Detroit, Michigan, on June 28, 1895. 

He studied at the Detroit School of Fine Arts with John P. Wicker. After 
serving in the American Expeditionary' Forces in France during World 
War I, he studied painting on scholarship at the Art Students League in 
New York City, with Guy Pene du Bois and George Luks. 

Meissner began his career as a printmaker in the early 1920s with lino¬ 
leum prints. He began to specialize in end-grain wood engraving during 
the 1930s. He worked in New York as art editor of Motor Boating Maga¬ 
zine from 1927 to 1950, after which time he devoted himself entirely to 
his art. For more than forty years, he sketched and painted every 
summer on Monhegan Island, twelve miles off the coast of Maine. 

Leo Meissner began exhibiting as an artist in 1924. During his career 
he had over seventy-five one-man shows. The first was held at the Print 
Corner, Hingham Centre, Massachusetts, in January 1929 and the most 
recent exhibition devoted to his work was held in May 1982 at the 
Bethesda Art Gallery in Bethesda, Maryland. The many prizes he was 
awarded include the Pennell purchase prize from the Library of Con¬ 
gress and awards from the Southern Printmakers and the Detroit Insti 
tute of Art. His work was included many times in Fifty' Prints of the Year 
during the late 1920s and the 1930s. 

The permanent collections in which Meissner’s work can be found 
include those at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Currier Gallery in 


Manchester, New Hampshire, the Farnsworth Museum in Rockland, 
Maine, the Philadelphia Museum of Art, and the New York Public Library. 

Sources 

“Wood-engravings by Leo Meissner.” Milwaukee Art Institute Bulletin 2 (March 
1929): 8. 

“Block Prints by Leo J. Meissner.” Akron Art Institute Bulletin 1 (October 
1929): 2. 

“LeoJ. Meissner.” Handbook oj the American Artists Group. New York, 1935 (p. 
50). 

Original Etchings, Lithographs and Woodcuts Published by the American Artists 
Group, Inc. New York, 1937 (p. 38). 

Reese, Albert M. American Prize Prints of the Twentieth Century’. New York: 
American Artists Group, 1949 (pp. 143, 250). 

Paintings and Wood-engravings by Leo Meissner. Maine: Anderson Learning 
Center, Nasson College, March 14-April 4, 1965. 

“Leo Meissner (1895-1977).” Childs Gallery Print Letter, no. 23 (June-August 
1980): 1-3. 

Who’s Who in American Art: 1940-47. 


78 





W A 


Fig. 23 

War Bulletins 

Leo John Meissner (1895-1977) 


Wood engraving, not dated 
(15.6 x 23-1 cm ) 

28/50, signed in pencil 


XXM515A2 

Fine Prints Collection 

Prints and Photographs Division 

Library’ of Congress 


19 













Leon Gordon Miller 

(b.1917) 

Linoleum cut: Aggression 


Leon Gordon Miller was born in New York on August 3, 1917. He 
studied at New Jersey State Teachers College, where he earned a bache¬ 
lor of science degree, at the Art Students League, at the Newark School 
of Fine and Industrial Art, at the Fawcett Art School, and with Bernard 
Gussow. Miller has been awarded two honorary doctorates in fine arts, 
from Baldwin Wallace College (1971) and Kean College in New Jersey 
(1973). 

At the time of the “America in the War” exhibition, Miller was living 
in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. During the war (1941-43), he served as 
chief designer in the Office of the Chief of Ordnance in Philadelphia 
and Newark. By 1947, he was teaching industrial design at the Cleveland 
Institute of Art, a post he retained until 1950. In 1948, he opened his 
own design firm, Leon Gordon Miller Associates, in Cleveland. In 1971, 
he also founded KV Design International, Ltd. 

Leon Gordon Miller described himself in 1980 as “a multi-media 
artist engaged in painting, printmaking, sculpture and stained glass, 
working in a contemporary style and technique” (Who's Who in Ameri¬ 
can Art). He has written a book, Stained Glass Craft, published by Mac¬ 
Millan & Company in 1973, and was coauthor of Light by Design (pub¬ 
lished by General Electric, 1971). 

Miller has been included prominently in several recent articles and 
books on interior design and contemporary 7 synagogue art. He has been 
commissioned not only to do stained glass for religious purposes but 
also to create ceremonial sculpture and tapestries. For example, he 
designed the eternal light, menorah, ark, curtain, and other decorative 
items for the Temple on the Heights in Cleveland, Ohio. The Industrial 
Designers Institute gave Miller their Silver Medal in 1962, and he won a 
sculpture award in the Department of Housing and Urban Develop¬ 
ment’s National Community Art Competition in 1973- Miller has also 
served on the board of the Pierpont Morgan Library Guild for Religious 
Art and Architecture. 

During the 1940s and 1950s, Leon Gordon Miller participated in 
numerous group shows, including some at the Pennsylvania Academy of 
the Fine Arts, the Library of Congress, the Cleveland Museum of Art, and 
the Butler Art Institute. His first one-man show was held in 1948 at the 


Norlyst Gallery. Since then, he has had about fifteen such special exhibi¬ 
tions of his art. In addition to interiors and objects which he has 
designed in religious institutions, examples of Miller’s work may be 
found in the Gertrude Stein Collection at Yale University and the Library 7 
of Congress. 

Sources 

“Color Trends in Stained Glass: III, Leon Gordon Miller.” Interior Design 28 
(May 1957): 94. 

Kamph, Avram. Contemporary Synagogue Art. Union of American Hebrew 
Congregations, 1966. 

Ball. V. Art of Interior Design. New York: Macmillan & Co., I960. 

Who’s Who in American Art: 1953-80. 


Gladys Amy Mock 

(1891-1976) 

Copper engraving: Fighting Fire 


Gladys Amy Mock was born in New 7 York City in 1891. She studied at 
the Calhoun School and at the Art Students League from 1909 to 1913, 
primarily with Kenneth Hayes Miller. In 1920, Mock was introduced to 
the medium of etching by William Ivins, Jr., curator of prints at the Met¬ 
ropolitan Museum of Art. In 1923, she studied printmaking w 7 ith William 
Stanley Hayter and experimented w 7 ith Letterio Calapai in color 
engraving. 

Between 1918 and 1928, Gladys Mock served as New 7 York representa¬ 
tive to the American Magazine of Art. During these same years, she was 
in charge of sales service at the Bureau Office of the American Federa¬ 
tion of Arts. In 1924, she married Pierce Trow'bridge Wetter, a founding 
member of the corporation which formed the Washington Square Out¬ 
door Art Exhibits (of which Mock became director in 1969). In 1959, she 
was elected first woman president of the Society 7 of American Graphic 
Artists. She also served as president of the Audobon Association, 

1959-60. Mock was directly involved in the Artists for Victory organiza¬ 
tion. Before its demise in November 1945, she w 7 as nominated head of 
its graphic arts committee. 

Gladys Mock had a number of solo shows throughout her career. 





These include exhibitions at the Delphic Studios, the Dudensing Gal¬ 
leries, the Elliot Museum of Art at Stuart, Hutchinson Island, Florida, 
the Bruce Museum in Greenwich, Connecticut, and the Thomas Water¬ 
man Wood Gallery, Montpelier, Vermont. Mock, who lived on Washing¬ 
ton Square, maintained a summer studio in Montpelier for many years. 

She also participated in numerous group exhibitions all over the 
country. She showed in Venice, Italy, and was included in a show sent 
abroad by the U.S. Information Agency from I960 through 1962. She 
exhibited at the New York World’s Fair, 1939-40, and among the 
numerous prizes she won was the Margaret Lowengrund Memorial Prize 
for Graphics, awarded by the National Association of Women Artists 
( 1962 ). 

Examples of Mock’s work may be found in the permanent collections 
of such museums as the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, the 
Todd Museum in Kalamazoo, Michigan, Kansas State College, the Metro¬ 
politan Museum of Art, the New York Public Library, the Georgia 
Museum of Art, and the Smithsonian Institution. The painter Isabel 
Bishop, her good friend for many years, recently noted that toward the 
end of her career, Mock, a traditionalist, turned to more experimental 
work, gaining as a result a great deal of new interest and power. 

Sources 

“Wins Prizes with Oils and Prints.” The Villager, Greenwich Village, New York, 
August 11, 1949. 

Exhibition of Prints by Gladys Mock. Stuart, Hutchinson Island, Florida: Elliott 
Museum, January 12-February 14, 1969. 

“Distinguished Engraver’s Show Will Open at Elliott January 13 ” Stuart News. 
January 7 9, 1969. 

“Gladys Mock Etchings to Be Featured at Exhibit.” Times Argus, Montpelier, 
Vermont, November 4, 1971. 

Collins, J. L. Women Artists in America, 18th Century> to the Present. Chatta¬ 
nooga: University 7 of Tennessee, 1973. 

“Gladys Mock, 85, Artist, Modernistic Engraver.” New York Times, October 31, 
1976. 

Who’s Who in American Art: 1940-47, 1953, 1966. 


Helen Morris 

(dates unknown) 
Lithograph: Swing Shift 


Helen Morris was active as an artist in the Pueblo, Colorado, area at 
the time of her submission to the “America in the War” competition. 


81 




Ira Moskowitz 

(b.1912) 

Lithograph: War Worker 


Ira Moskowitz was born in a little town at the foot of the Carpathian 
Mountains, in what was formerly Austro-Poland, on March 15, 1912. He 
came to the United States in 1927 and studied at the Art Students League 
with Harry Wickey from 1929 to 1931- From 1935 to 1938 he traveled 
extensively in Europe, Africa, and Asia. By the early 1940s, he had settled 
in Santa Fe, New Mexico, where he began to specialize in western 
landscape scenes and American Indian subject matter. 

In 1949, Ira Moskowitz illustrated a book, Patterns and Ceremonials 
of the Indians of the Southwest, which had a text by John Collier and an 
introduction by John Sloan. He showed lithographs and drawings from 
this book at Kennedy & Company that year. Other one-man exhibitions 
by Moskowitz include a show in 1937 sponsored by the Society for the 
Advancement of Judaism in New York; a show of Indian subjects in Old 
and New Mexico at Arthur H. Harlow & Company, New York; a presenta¬ 
tion and sale organized by the Association of American Indian Affairs, 
Inc. in 1947; and shows at the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, the San 
Antonio Museum of Art, and the New York City Natural History Museum. 
He established the Ira Moskowitz Graphic Art Club to sell his works in 
1941. In 1975, a complete retrospective of Moskowitz’s prints was organ 
ized by the Brooks Memorial Art Gallery in Memphis, Tennessee. This 
show was accompanied by a catalogue raisonne. 


A participant in a number of group shows throughout his career, Ira 
Moskowitz was awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship in 1943 and a prize 
from the Library of Congress in 1945. His lithograph War Worker was 
chosen to take second place in the planographic division of the “Amer¬ 
ica in the War” exhibition. Other examples from his oeuvre may be seen 
in the collections of the Whitney Museum of American Art, the Metropol¬ 
itan Museum of Art, the Brooklyn Museum, the New York Public Library, 
the Carnegie Institute, the Albany Institute of History' and Art, the 
Museum of Navajo Ceremonial Art in Santa Fe, and the Philbrook Art 
Center in Oklahoma. 


Sources 

“Exhibition, New York.” Pictures on Exhibit 12 (November 1949): 48. 

Reese, Albert M. American Prize Prints of the 20th Century. New York: American 
Artists Group, 1949 (pp. 147, 250). 

Ira Moskowitz. New'York: Shorewood Publishers, 1966. 

Czestochowski, Joseph S., ed. Ira Moskowitz Catalogue Raisonne, 1929-1975. 
Memphis, Tenn.: Brooks Memorial Art Gallery, November 1-December 31, 1975. 


82 





Fig. 24 

War Worker 

Ira Moskowitz, b. 1912 


Lithograph, 1943 (25.5 x 35.1 cm) 
Signed and dated on stone, signed in 
pencil 


XXM911 B4 

Fine Prints Collection 

Prints and Photographs Division 

Library’ of Congress 


83 









Fuji Nakamizo 

(1889-?) 

Etching: Emblem of Strength and Courage 


Fuji Nakamizo, a painter, etcher, and lithographer, was born January 
17, 1889, in Fukuiken, Japan. He came to the United States as a teenager. 
Nakamizo studied at the Art Students League in New York, at the Cooper 
Union Art School, and with Joseph Pennell, W. D. Dodge, and Frank 
DuMond. A specialist in portraits and figure and landscape composi¬ 
tions, Nakamizo executed a decorative mural for President Woodrow 
Wilson in 1919. 

In the early 1930s, Fuji Nakamizo worked on the Public Works of Art 
Project in New York, predecessor of the W.P.A. His major subject matter 
at this time was animals, especially dogs, ducks, fish, and birds. This 
type of motif was continued in the work which he submitted to “Amer¬ 
ica in the War,” which prominently displays an American eagle looming 
large in the foreground, sitting on a tree branch surrounded by war 
planes. 

Nakamizo participated in a number of group exhibitions all over the 
United States. These included shows at the Pennsylvania Academy of the 
Fine Arts, the National Gallery of Art, the National Academy of Design, 
the Houston Museum of Fine Arts, the Norfolk Museum of Fine Arts, the 
Portland Oregon Museum Association, the Santa Barbara Museum, the 
Philadelphia Print Club, and the Honolulu Academy of Arts. He also 
exhibited with the Society of American Etchers in 1945. 

Sources 

Who's Who in American Art: 1940-47. 


84 


Mildred Bernice Nungester 

(b. 1912) 

Lithograph: Warsaw, London, Coventry, etc .— 


Mildred Bernice Nungester was born in Celina, Ohio, on August 23, 
1912. She studied at Athens College, the Alabama State College for 
Women (where she earned a bachelor of arts degree), and the Colorado 
Springs Fine Arts Center (where she earned her master’s degree). She 
also studied an at the Art Institute of Chicago, at the Art Students League 
in New York, and with J. Kelly Fitzpatrick and Boardman Robinson. In 
the 1950s, she taught art at Allison’s Wells Art Colony in Way, Missis¬ 
sippi, and Millsaps College in Jackson. 

Nungester, who became Mrs. Karl Wolfe, exhibited a poster design in 
Artists for Victory’s war poster competition. She is responsible for murals 
at the St. Andrew’s Episcopal Day School in Jackson, Mississippi, the 
Jacksonian Highway Hotel, and the Stevens Department Store in Richton, 
Mississippi. She executed a mosaic depicting the Stations of the Cross 
for St. Richard’s Catholic Church, also in Jackson. 

Mildred Nungester exhibited from the 1930s through the 1950s with, 
among others, the Corcoran Gallery of Art, the Mississippi Art Associa¬ 
tion, the Birmingham Museum of Art, and the Alabama Art League and at 
the New York World’s Fair (1939-40). The McDowell Gallery' and the 
Alabama Art League awarded her prizes in 1935, 1938, and 1940. Her 
work is in the permanent collections of the Montgomery Museum of 
Fine Arts, the Municipal Art Gallery', Jackson, Mississippi State College 
and the Alabama Polytechnic Institute. 

Sources 

Who's Who in American Art: 1937, 1953, 1962. 






Seymour Nydorf 

(b.1914) 

Lithograph: Today, Europe; — Tomorrow, the World. . . 


Seymour Nydorf was born in Brooklyn, New York, on June 28, 1914. 
He studied printmaking at the Art Students League with Will Barnet. At 
the time of the “America in the War” competition, he was employed by 
the O.S.S. in Washington, D.C., as a graphic artist and designer. He later 
went overseas to the China-Burma-India war theater. 

Nydorf, while stationed in Washington, D.C., helped the chairman of 
the art department at Howard University, Lessene Wells, to reconstitute 
an unused lithography press. He ordered stones from New York and 
made prints, including his entry to Artists for Victory, at Howard 
University. 

After World War II, Nydorf s career moved in the direction of advertis¬ 
ing art and design. He returned to New York City to work in this field 
and in 1949 his projected scheme for a butcher shop was featured in 


Interiors magazine’s ninth annual collection of “Interiors to Come.” Part 
of his design was a mural, From Farm to You, added as an instructive as 
well as a decorative touch. 

Seymour Nydorf has shown in a number of group exhibitions, with 
the Audobon Artists (who awarded him a prize), the National Academy 
of Design, and the American Watercolor Society. In 1966, he had a one- 
man exhibit of oil paintings in New York City. In recent years, Nydorf 
has returned to printmaking, concentrating on intaglio work and col- 
lography, the application of collage methods to graphics. 

Sources 

B.R. “Interiors to Come—Seymour Nydorf. Design Catches Up with the Butcher 
Shop.” Interiors 108 (January' 1949): 111-13- 




Phil Herschel Paradise 

(b.1905) 

Lithograph: Inductees 


Phil Paradise was born in Ontario, Oregon, on August 26, 1905. He 
studied at the Chouinard Art Institute in Los Angeles with F. Tolies 
Chamberlain, Clarence Hinckle, Leon Kroll, Rico Lebrun, and David 
Alfaro Siqueiros. Beginning in 1931, Paradise himself taught at Choui¬ 
nard, becoming its director, 1936-40. Later, in the 1950s, he taught at 
Scripps College, the California College of Arts and Crafts, and the Uni 
versity of Texas, El Paso. He has also served as director of the Gerry 
Peirce Watercolor School in Tucson, Arizona (1952-53). 

Paradise first became interested in the medium of silkscreen when, as 
a teenager, he worked in a sign shop in Bakersfield, California. He paid 
for his tuition as a student at Chouinard by doing commercial lettering. 
In 1929, he designed and built his own intaglio press. Six years later, 
while living in Uruapan, State of Michoacan, Mexico, for five months, he 
began to approach serigraphy from a fine art, rather than commercial, 
point of view, because he did not have intaglio equipment available. In 
the period immediately preceding World War II, a number of his works 
were purchased by the Section of Painting and Sculpture of the U.S. 
Treasury Department. 

From 1941 to 1948, Phil Paradise worked as a motion picture art direc¬ 
tor and production designer for Sol Lesser Productions, a division of 
Paramount Studios. During the war, he made propaganda posters for the 
American Red Cross. With James H. Patrick, one of the teachers on his 
staff when he directed Chouinard (and fellow participant in “America in 
the War”), Paradise built models for protective concealment, eventually 
leading to an appointment as chief camoufleur for the United Office of 
Civilian Defense. Under the auspices of this organization, Paradise and 
Patrick prepared a manual for the camouflage training of bombardiers 
and worked out a plan for the aerial concealment of the entire Pacific 
coast. During this period, Paradise also did editorial illustrations for 
Fortune, True, and Westways magazines. He served as president of the 
California Watercolor Society, 1939-40. 

Phil Paradise has participated in numerous group exhibitions during 
his career, including many at which he was given prizes. These include, 


among others, the Los Angeles County Fair (1935 and 1937), the Phila¬ 
delphia Watercolor Club (1943), the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine 
Arts (1941), and the San Diego Fine Arts Association (1940). His litho¬ 
graph Inductees, depicting the entry of new recruits into an army camp, 
was awarded third prize in the planographic division of the “America in 
the War” competition. He also won an award from the Pepsi Cola Com¬ 
pany in 1945. 

Paradise has had a number of one-man shows, for example, at the Los 
Angeles County Museum in 1941. His work may be seen in the per¬ 
manent collections of such institutions as the San Diego Museum, the 
Carville Marine Hospital in Louisiana, Kansas State LIniversity, and Cor¬ 
nell University. Primarily a painter and printmaker, Phil Paradise also 
worked in ceramics in the 1940s and for a time in the mid-1960s turned 
his concentration to sculpture. He worked with a blowtorch on metal 
salvage, as well as making bronzes with the lost wax method. 

Sources 

“In the Watercolor Group Phil Paradise Won the First Prize of $200 for His 
Orchard at Exhibition of Contemporary California Paintings at the Golden Gate.” 
San Francisco Art Association Bulletin 7 (August 1940): 5. 

“Virginia Paradise and Her Husband, Painter Phil Paradise, Are Collaborating 
Ceramists, Signing Their Work ‘Ginia.’” House Beautiful 83 
(November 1941): 82. 

Penney, Janice. “California Artists and the War.” American Artist 7 
(November 1943): 32, 34. 

Phil Paradise. An Exhibition of Paintings at the Los Angeles County Museum. Los 
Angeles, October 1941. 

Johnson, Beverly. “Phil Paradise and His Works.” Los Angeles Times Home 
Magazine (1967 ). 

Lovos, Janice. “The Serigraphs of Phil Paradise.” American Artist 33 (October 
1969): 43-48, 81-82. 





Fig. 25 

Inductees 

Phil Herschel Paradise, b. 1905 

Lithograph, not dated 
(19.5x37.2 cm) 

18/50, signed in pencil 
Printed by Paul Roeher 

XX P222A4 

Fine Prints Collection 

Prints and Photographs Division 

Library of Congress 


87 
















Harold Persico Paris 

(b.1925) 

Colored woodcut: They Suffer Too 


Harold Persico Paris, the youngest artist to exhibit in “America in the 
War,” was born in Edgemere, New York, in 1925. He studied print¬ 
making with Stanley William Hayter at Atelier 17 and also studied art at 
the Academie der bildenden Klinste in Munich. Paris has been awarded 
two important grants to pursue his work, from the Tiffany Foundation 
(1948-50) and the Guggenheim Foundation (1953-55). At the time of 
his submission to Artists for Victory, Paris, only seventeen years old, 
lived in Brooklyn, New York. Later, in 1945, he worked in Germany as an 
illustrator for the armed services publication Stars and Stripes and saw 
firsthand the horrors of the Nazi death camps. From 1954 to 1959 he 
lived in France. Most of his mature career has been pursued in Berkeley, 
California, where he moved to take a faculty position at the University of 
California in I960. 

Harold Paris had a number of one-man print exhibitions in New York 
City in the early 1950s, including one at the Argent Gallery and one at 
the Village Art Center in Greenwich Village. At the time, he was experi¬ 
menting with making prints from lucite plates. Paris, however, is primar¬ 
ily known as a sculptor, and his name is usually linked with the Funk Art 
movement indigenous to California in the 1960s. With art historian Peter 
Selz, Paris wrote a seminal article, “Sweet Land of Funk,” for Art in 
America in 1967. 

The designation “Funk Art” had its etymology in a type of jazz charac¬ 
terized by mellowness and improvisation. In the art of Californians it 
frequently involves a mocking, paradoxical, Surrealistic, and antiaesthetic 
attitude, often deliberately emphasizing the ugly and whimsically gro¬ 
tesque. Paris’s enigmatic Souls series, in which small objects cast in sil 
icon, and sometimes painted phosphorescently, are enclosed in lit 
chambers of plexiglas, is an example of his approach to Funk. Much of 
the work of this and subsequent series seems to be preoccupied with 
death and suffering, as a result of his wartime experience in Europe. An 
exhibition at the Jewish Museum in New York City in 1976, “Kaddish for 
the Little Children,” is another example of this facet of his sensibility. 


Numerous one-man exhibitions of Harold Paris’s sculpture have been 
mounted in California and elsewhere in the United States. His most 
recent print exhibition took place in 1970 at the Berkeley Art Center, 
where twenty-five years of his graphic career were surveyed. In 1972, 
Paris had a ten-year retrospective at the University Art Museum, 

Berkeley, entitled “Harold Paris: The California Years.” This exhibition, 
which traveled throughout the nation in 1973, occasioned a number of 
important publications on his art. 

His work may be seen in many major collections. A partial list would 
include the Museum of Modern Art, the Whitney Museum of American 
Art, the Philadelphia Museum of Art, the National Gallery of Art, the 
Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, the Art Institute of Chicago, 
and the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art. 


Sources 

“Lucite Plates for Making Black and White and Color Prints.” Pictures on Exhibit 
13 (April 1951): 54-55. 

The Prints of Harold Paris. New York: Argent Galleries, April 2-22, 1951. 

McNulty, Kneeland. “Hosannah: The Work of Harold Paris.” Artists Proof 1 
(1961): 12-17. 

Selz, Peter, Kneeland McNulty, Lawrence Dinnean, and Herschel Chipp. Harold 
Paris: The California Years. Berkeley, California: University Art Museum, 1972. 

Selz, Peter. “Harold Persico Paris: The California Years.” Art International 16 
(April 20, 1972): 42-44, 56-57. 

"Harold Paris’ Art Rocks U.C. Museum.” Oakland Tribune, May 7, 1972. 
Hersham, Lynn. “Harold Paris’ Berkeley Years.” Artweek, May 20, 1972. 

Who's Who in American Art: 1966. 


88 





Fig. 26 

They Suffer Too 

Harold Persico Paris, b. 1925 

Color woodcut, not dated 
(28 x 20.5 cm) 

Signed in pencil 

XX P229A1 

Fine Prints Collection 

Prints and Photographs Division 

Library of Congress 


89 


James Hollins Patrick 

(1911-1944) 

Lithograph: This Is Our Enemy 


James H. Patrick was born in Cranbrook, British Columbia, on Sep 
tember 14, 1911. He moved to Los Angeles, California, at the age of five, 
attending public schools there. He was graduated from Hollywood High 
School in 1929 and went on to Chouinard Art School on scholarship. He 
was graduated from there in 1931- He subsequently taught figure draw¬ 
ing, still life, and watercolor landscape painting at Chouinard. During 
his student years there, Patrick studied mural painting under the revolu¬ 
tionary Mexican artist David Alfaro Siqueiros and was one of the stu 
dents who assisted Siqueiros in painting a mural for the patio of the 
school. 

With Millard Sheets, Patrick later painted three large frescoes for the 
South Pasadena High School, and he helped Leo Katz execute two 
murals for the Frank Wiggins Trade School in Los Angeles. Before World 
War II, Patrick worked as color director for the Charles Mintz Studio (the 
cartoon division of Columbia Pictures, Corporation), and he also 
worked as color director of final release prints for Technicolor Studios. 
He served as president of the California Watercolor Society and was an 
active member of the Foundation of Western Art. He also became a 
cover designer and illustrator for Westways magazine. 

With the outbreak of World War II, James H. Patrick devoted much 
time and effort to making propaganda posters. He and Paramount 
Studios artist Phil Paradise (also a contributor to “America in the War”), 
worked out ideas on protective concealment in their spare time. Ameri¬ 
can Artist magazine noted that the technical division of the United 


Office of Civil Defense saw their efforts and, as a result, hired Patrick 
and Paradise as civilian camoufleurs for the U.S. Army Air Force Bom¬ 
bardier Training Squadron. They were assigned by the Western Defense 
Command to plan aerial camouflage for the Pacific coast. The two also 
taught camouflage detection and collaborated on an Air Force manual 
on that subject. 

James Hollins Patrick died of tuberculosis in 1944, at age thirty-three. 
During his relatively short career, he won many awards, including a pur¬ 
chase prize from the Library of Congress the year before his death. He 
participated in group exhibitions at the Corcoran Gallery of Art, the Art 
Institute of Chicago, the Pennyslvania Academy of Fine Arts, the National 
Gallery' of Art, the American Watercolor Society, the Riverside Museum, 
the Carnegie Institute, the San Diego Fine Arts Gallery, and the Los 
Angeles and San Francisco Museums. A memorial show of his works was 
held in October 1945 at the Biltmore Art Galleries in Los Angeles. 

Sources 

Penney, Janice. “California Artists and the War.” American Artistl (November 
1943): 32. 

W. K. B. “Fine Arts—and the Bombardier.” Westways Magazine { 1943): 5. 

Millier, Arthur. “James Patrick.” In James Patrick Memorial Exhibition. Los 
Angeles: Biltmore Art Galleries, October 1945. 


90 





Fig. 27 

This Is Our Enemy 

James Hollins Patrick (1911-1944) 


XXP314B1 

Fine Prints Collection 

Prints and Photographs Division 

Library of Congress 


Lithograph, not dated (23 x 37.6 cm ) 
Signed in stone 
Printed by P. Roeher 


91 



Martin Petersen 

(1870-?) 

Etching: Victory Gardens 


Martin Petersen, a painter and etcher, was born in Denmark in 1870. 
He studied at the National Academy of Design in New York and at the 
time of the “America in the War” exhibition resided in West Englewood, 
New Jersey. 

Petersen was awarded prizes for his art in the 1930s, 1940s, and 1950s 
from the National Academy of Design, the New York Watercolor Club, 
and the Library of Congress. In 1938, the Society of American Etchers 
gave him their Frederick Talcott Prize (best by a nonmember). After 
receiving that prize, Petersen joined the group. His work was included 
in “Arte Grafico del Hemisferio Occidental” in 1941 and he had a one- 
man exhibition at H.V. Allison & Co. in New York in April and May of 
1942. 

In the late 1930s and 1940s, Martin Petersen worked on the W.P.A. 

Fine Arts Project in New York. He exhibited at the New York World’s 
Fair. Examples from his oeuvre can be seen in the Newark, New Jersey, 
Public Library and the Boston Museum of Fine Arts, as well as the Library 
of Congress. 

Sources 

American Art Today. New York, 1939. 

Reese, Albert M. American Prize Prints of the 20th Century. New York: American 
Artists Group, 1949 (pp. 160, 252). 

Who's Who in American Art: 1940-47, 1953 


92 


Leonard Pytlak 

(b.1910) 

Color silkscreen: They Serve on All Fronts 


Leonard Pytlak was born in Newark, New Jersey, on March 3, 1910. He 
studied at the Newark School of Fine and Industrial Art and the Art 
Students League of New York. A painter as well as a printmaker, Pytlak 
executed a mural for the Greenpoint Hospital in Brooklyn under W.P.A. 
auspices in the 1930s. He also worked on the Graphic Section of the 
Fine Arts Project in New York in 1938, becoming part of its experimental 
silkscreen unit. In 1941, he was awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship to 
explore new techniques in color lithography and serigraphy, the latter a 
relatively new fine arts application of the silkscreen medium. During the 
1940s, Pytlak served twice as a president of the National Serigraph 
Society. 

Leonard Pytlak was one of the signers of a call to American artists to 
convene a congress in defense of culture against the rising tide of 
Fascism in 1941. The following year, he participated in the A.C.A. 
Gallery’s “Artists in the War” exhibition, and one of his works was pur¬ 
chased by the Office of Emergency Management out of their competi¬ 
tion to record defense and war activities. Pytlak won second prize in the 
serigraphy division of the “America in the War” competition for a print 
depicting the important job done by mobile medical surgery units on 
the war front. 

In the 1940s, Leonard Pytlak had a number of one-man shows of his 
work, which included an exhibition at the A.C.A. Gallery in 1942, a joint 
showing with Harry Shokler at Kennedy & Company, and solos at the 
Weyhe Gallery in 1944, the Graphic Division of the U.S. National 
Museum, Smithsonian Institution, in 1948, and the Serigraph Gallery in 
1949. Throughout his career, he has exhibited in a large number of 
group shows, winning awards from the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the 
Philadelphia Print Club, the Philadelphia Color Print Society, the Seattle 
Art Museum, the National Academy of Design, and the Library of Con¬ 
gress. He created the Print of the Year for the National Serigraph Society 
in I960. 





In another facet of his career, Leonard Pytlak has been teaching draw¬ 
ing, painting, and silkscreen for the past twenty years. During the 1960s, 
he conducted a private studio for handicapped students from the New 
York State Rehabilitation Department. Most recently, he has been an 
instructor for the Craft Students League of the YWCA on Lexington 
Avenue in New York City. The Craft Students League Gallery gave him a 
complete retrospective of fifty years of creative work in printmaking in 
May 1982. 

Other examples of Pytlak’s work may be seen in the permanent col¬ 
lections of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Carnegie Institute, the 
Denver Art Museum, the New York Public Library, the Philadelphia 
Museum of Art, the Museum of Modern Art, the Brooklyn Museum, the 
Boston Museum of Fine Arts, and others. 


Sources 

Silkscreen Prints by Pytlak. Foreword by Carl Zigrosser. New York: A.C.A. Gallery, 
May 10-22, 1942. 

Lansford, Alonzo. “Pytlak Serigraphs.” Art Digest 21 (December 1, 1946): 15. 

Berryman, Florence S. “Serigraphs by Pytlak at National Museum Employ Rich 
Colors in Simple Treatments.” Sunday Star, Washington, D.C., November 3, 

1948, pp. 5-6. 

Reese, Albert M. American Prize Prints of the 20th Century. New York: American 
Artists Group, 1949 (pp. 165, 252). 

Recent Serigraphs by Leonard Pytlak. New York: Serigraph Gallery, October 
17-November 12, 1949. 



Fig. 28 

They Serve on AU Fronts 

Leonard Pytlak, b. 1910 

Color silkscreen, not dated 
(33 2 x 40.7 cm ) 

Signed in pencil 

XXP999 B7 

Fine Prints Collection 

Prints and Photographs Division 

Library of Congress 


93 






Charles F. Quest 

(b.1904) 

Woodcut: Nearing the End 


Charles F. Quest was born in Troy, New York, on June 6, 1904. He 
pursued his art training at the Washington University School of Fine Arts 
in St. Louis from 1924 to 1929, and then he spent six months studying 
abroad. He returned to live in New York for a time, returning to St. Louis 
by 1944 to join the faculty of his alma mater. He retired from his profes¬ 
sorship at Washington University in 1971. 

During the war years, three of Quest’s works were purchased by the 
Office of Emergency Management, as a result of its competition to 
record defense and war activities. His wood-engraving Nearing the End 
won honorable mention in the relief category' of the Artists for Victory’s 
“America in the War” exhibition. Although Quest had been making 
woodcuts since 1930, Nearing the End marked his first attempt at 
engraving an end-grain block. Quest has noted Goya and Daumier as 
strong influences on his work. 

In addition to making prints, Charles Quest has also worked exten¬ 
sively as a painter, stone carver, sculptor, mosaicist, and stained-glass 
designer. He has been commissioned for a number of important murals, 
including the State of Missouri murals for the Chicago World’s Fair in 
the 1930s, a mural for St. Mary’s Church in Helena, Arkansas, and one for 
the Carpenter Branch Library in St. Louis. Two Episcopal churches in St. 
Louis gave him mural commissions (1934-35), and the Catholic Archbi¬ 
shop of that city asked him in 1959 to paint a replica of Diego Velas¬ 
quez’s Crucifixion of 1632-38 for the Old Cathedral. The preparation of 
this mural, completed in I960, was featured in the St. Louis Post- 
Dispatch (Sunday magazine, September 18, I960). 

In 1951 Quest was invited by the cultural attache of the U.S. Embassy 
in Paris to exhibit at the Petit Palais and then send his works on tour 
throughout France. Other touring exhibitions including Quest’s work 
which were sent abroad were organized by the Boston Public Library, 
the Museum of Modern Art, the Philadelphia Print Club, and the U.S. 
Information Agency. Quest has exhibited in ninety-five museums and 


galleries throughout the world, winning fifty-three prizes and awards. 

He had his first one-man exhibition in Washington, D.C., in 1951, organ¬ 
ized by the Division of Graphic Arts of the Smithsonian Institution. 

A partial listing of other solo exhibitions of Quest’s work includes the 
St. Louis City Art Museum; the Escuela Libre de Art y Galeria, Uruapan, 
Michoacan, Mexico; the St. Louis Artists Guild; the Springfield Museum 
of Art in Missouri; and the Mint Museum in Charlotte, North Carolina. 
The St. Louis Club, in St. Louis, Missouri, installed a permanent “Charles 
Quest Gallery” in 1968. Quest’s work is in many other private and pub¬ 
lic collections in the United States, Paris, Israel, Stockholm, London, 

New Zealand, and Australia. Since his retirement, Charles F. Quest has 
lived in North Carolina. His most recent work continues to display a 
keen interest in social comment. 


Sources 

“Quest’s Art Exhibit in Webster Groves.” St. Louis Post-Dispatch, October 12, 
1954. 

“St. Louis Artist, Native Trojan, Will Revisit City.” Troy, N. Y., Record, July 1, 1958. 

McCue, George. “Replica of Famous Masterpiece for Old Cathedral.” St. Louis 
Post Dispatch, Sunday magazine, September 18, 1982, pp. 20-23. 

Schweder, Mary. “In Quest of Humanistic Art.” Arts Journal {March 1980): 

23-24. 

“Featured: Charles Quest.” Tryon (N.C.) Daily Bulletin, March 11, 1980. 

"The Last Peace Conference.” Tryon (N.C.) Daily Bulletin, October 5, 1981. 

Who's Who in America: 1952-81. 

Who’s Who in American Art: 1953-80. 


94 





Fig. 29 

Nearing the End 

Charles F. Quest, h. 1904 

Woodcut, 1943 (21.5 x 28 cm) 
15/30, signed and dated in pencil 


XXQ24A1 

Fine Prints Collection 

Prints and Photographs Division 

Library of Congress 




Ruth Starr Rose 

(1887-1965) 

Lithograph: I Couldn’t Hear Nobody Pray 


Ruth Starr was born at Eau Claire, Wisconsin, on July 12, 1887. A gradu¬ 
ate of the National Cathedral School in Washington, D.C., and Vassar 
College, she studied painting at the Art Students League in New York 
before marrying W. Searls Rose in 1914. After having several children, 
she returned to New York to study lithography in 1922. Some of Rose’s 
teachers included Hayley Lever, Victoria Hutson Huntley, Harry Stern¬ 
berg, and William Palmer. 

As a young girl, Rose lived at Hope House, a historic fifty-room 
eighteenth-century mansion on the Eastern Shore of the Chesapeake 
Bay, near Easton, Maryland. Her lifelong love of sailing (she owned the 
famous cup-winning yacht Belle McCrane ) and her concentration on the 
life, character, and spirituals of the Negro in her art, date to this forma¬ 
tive period. Her contribution to “America in the War,” I Couldn’t Hear 
Nobody Pray, which depicts a black soldier with a walkie-talkie watching 
parachuters come down on a tropical island, reflects her predominant 
interests. Rose also exhibited in the A.C.A. Gallery’s June 1942 “Artists in 
the War” exhibition a piece depicting war workers in Maryland. 

Ruth Starr Rose has been included in a number of group shows 
throughout her career. Some of these were held at the National Academy 
of Design, the National Color Print Society, the Library of Congress, the 
Northwest Printmakers, and the National Association of Women Artists. 
She won awards for her art from the last and from the State of New Jer¬ 
sey, the Washington Area Printmakers, the Corcoran Gallery of Art, the 
New York Council of Art, Science, and Professions, the Virginia Print- 
makers, and the 1958 Religious Art Fair. 

A resident of Alexandria, Virginia, by the 1950s, Ruth Starr Rose had a 
one-woman show there in 1952 at the Playhouse Art Gallery. This show 
was arranged by Prentiss Taylor, chairman of the gallery committee and 
another of the artists in “America in the War.” Another show devoted 


solely to Rose’s work was held in 1955 at the Dupont Theater Gallery in 
Washington, D.C. Howard University gave her a solo exhibition in 1956, 
and the George Washington University Library held a similar show of 
Rose’s works the following year. 

In the fifties, Rose was also asked to paint a mural for a chapel of the 
African Methodist Church in Copperville, Maryland. Her decoration was 
inspired by the Negro spiritual “Pharoah’s Army Got Drownded.” Rose’s 
paintings and prints can be found in the permanent collections of the 
Metropolitan Museum of Art, Vassar College, the Philadelphia Museum 
of Art, Wells College, Williams College, Milliken College, Howard Llni- 
versity, and the Norfolk Museum of Arts and Sciences in Virginia. 

Sources 

Original Etchings, Lithographs and Woodcuts Published by the American Artists 
Group Inc. Comment by Carl Zigrosser. New York, 1937 (p. 42). 

“Noted Eastern Shore Artist Gives Four Paintings to Howard U.” Sunday Star, 
Washington, D.C., May 17, 1942. 

“Lyrical Lithographs.” Washington Star, February 3, 1952. 

“Rose at Mart.” Washington Star, May 1955. 

“Ruth Starr Rose Dead; Painter, Lithographer.” Washington Post, October 26, 
1965. p. 134. 

Collins, J. L. Women Artists in America, 18th Century to the Present. Chatta¬ 
nooga: University of Tennessee, 1973- 

Who's Who in American Art: 1937, 1953- 




Karl Schrag 

(b. 1912) 

Etching and aquatint: Persecution 


Karl Schrag was born on December 7, 1912, in Karlsruhe on Rhine, 
Germany, of a German father and an American mother. He was gradu¬ 
ated from the Humanistisches Gymnasium. When his family moved to 
Switzerland in 1930, he studied in Zurich and at the Ecole des beaux arts 
in Geneva. In 1932, he went to Paris and took classes as the Ecole natio¬ 
nal superieure des beaux arts, the Grande Chaumiere, the Academie 
Ranson (studying primarily with Roger Bissiere), and in the atelier of 
Lucien Simon. 

In 1935, Karl Schrag went to live in Brussels, Belguim, and had his 
first one-man show there, at the Galerie Arensberg, in 1938. Soon after, 
with Hitler’s invasion of the countries surrounding Germany, Schrag 
emigrated to the United States. In this country, he studied printmaking 
at the Art Students League of New York with Harry Sternberg. Although 
he had made his first print (a linoleum cut) at the age of fourteen, it was 
the experience with Sternberg that really activated this interest and, in 
1939, his first showing in the United States was with the Society of Ameri¬ 
can Etchers. Schrag’s first one-man exhibition of paintings did not take 
place until 1947, at the Kraushaar Gallery. This was the beginning of a 
long series of solo exhibitions with that dealer. 

In 1941, Karl Schrag did eighteen aquatints as illustrations for a 
deluxe version of Robert Louis Stevenson’s The Suicide Club, published 
in a limited edition by Pierre Beres. This book was later chosen by the 
American Institute of Graphic Arts as one of the two hundred finest 
books published in a ten-year period. In the early 1940s, Schrag’s work 
was, however, primarily concerned with social problems, and especially 
with the war in Europe. His To Hell with Hitler was singled out by critics 
when shown at the Philadelphia Print Club in 1942. In 1940 Schrag made 
Persecution (also called Ecce Homo), which he submitted a few years 
later to Artists for Victory. After the “America in the War” exhibition 
opened, he wrote a letter to the editor of Art News, which was published 
in November 1943, citing the exhibition as proof that, in his belief, “the 
graphic arts can be like a magic mirror in which the essence of time is 


reflected,” more so than painting or sculpture. Schrag’s prints of wartime 
subject matter were shown in a group at his one-man exhibition organ¬ 
ized by the Division of Graphic Arts of the Smithsonian Institution in 
1945. 

The year previous, Karl Schrag had met Stanley William Hayter and 
had become associated with Atelier 17. This experience was catalytic for 
him, resulting in a change of focus. He moved away from social realism 
and toward a mystical interest in nature and a calligraphic linear style, 
similar to Oriental art. When Hayter returned to Europe after World War 
II, Schrag became director of Atelier 17 (1950-51). In the early fifties, 
Schrag also began teaching at Brooklyn College (1953-54) and the 
Cooper Union (where he stayed on the faculty until 1968). 

Karl Schrag had a number of solo showings in the 1950s, not only in 
New York and other locations in the United States but also in Germany. 

A traveling retrospective of his work was organized as a result of a Ford 
Foundation grant in I960, and a comprehensive retrospective of his 
prints since 1939 was held at the National Collection of Fine Arts in 
1972. A catalogue raisonne of his graphic oeuvre was published in two 
parts by Syracuse University, in 1971 and 1980. 

Other important awards won by Schrag for his art include two from 
the Brooklyn Museum, two from the Society of American Graphic Artists, 
one at the Fourth International Exhibition of Contemporary Art in New 
Delhi, India (1962), a Ford Fellowship at the Tamarind Workshop 
(1962), and a grant from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, 
given in 1966. Schrag has published a number of articles on printmaking 
and a portfolio of eighteen works, By the Sea (1965-66), and he has 
been featured in a film, Printmakers U.S.A., produced by the U.S. Infor¬ 
mation Agency in 1961. His work may be seen in such collections as the 
Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculp¬ 
ture Garden, the National Museum of American Art, the Victoria and 
Albert Museum in London, and the Everson Museum of Art, Syracuse 
University. 



Sources 


Mellow, James R. “Schrag Exhibition at the Smithsonian.” Art News 44 
(November 1, 1945): 8. 

Reed, Judith Kaye. “Subjective Schrag.” Art Digest 24 (March 1, 1950): 14. 

Burrey, Suzanne. “Karl Schrag: Movement Above and Below.” Arts Magazine 30 
(June 1956): 36-40. 

Young, Vernon. “The Double Craft—Two American Painter-Printmakers (Peterdi 
and Schrag)." Kunst Copenhagen 1 (1958): 15-17. 

Gordon, John. Karl Schrag. New York: American Federation of Arts, I960. 



98 


Schrag, Karl. “Happiness and Torment of Printmaking.” Artist’s Proof 6, no. 9-10 
(1966): 62-65. 

Detailed Information Relating to Karl Schrag's Career as a Contemporary 
American Artist. Mountainville, N.Y.: Storm King Art Center, 1967. 

Karl Schrag. A Catalogue Raisonne of the Graphic Works. Syracuse, N.Y.: College 
of Visual and Performing Arts, Syracuse University. Part I with a commentary by 
Una E. Johnson, 1972. Part II with a commentary by August E. Freundlich, 1980. 

Cochran, Diane. “Karl Schrag: On Landscape.” American Artist A0 (November 
1976): 50-57, 93-95. 

Schrag, Karl. “Light and Darkness in Contemporary Printmaking.” Print Review! 
(1977). 


Fig 30 

Persecution 

Karl Schrag, b. 1912 

Etching and aquatint, not dated 
(30.4 x 30.4 cm ) 

Edition of 75 

"The work is one of the deeply etched, 
dark aquatint etchings with themes 
which are like somber meditations on 
those years. Persecution shows symbol¬ 
ically both what America was fighting 
for and what it was fighting against. 
The isolated, dignified figure being 
shown to the ugly, almost monstrous 
crowd by the German soldier with the 
steel helmet represented to me every¬ 
thing of moral and spiritual value 
that had to be saved from total des 
truction. The print was also to give the 


assurance that in the end the spiritual 
strength of the victim would prevail — 
that all these surrounding criminal 
and vulgar powers could not succeed. 

"In some way I identified with that 
central figure. I was born and raised 
in Germany as the son of an Ameri¬ 
can mother and a German father. In 
1938, fearing war and the invasion 
of the countries adjoining Germany 
by the Nazi armies, I had left Belgium 
for America—to get away from perse¬ 
cution and the danger of death and 
seeking freedom for my faith and 
convictions. ” (Karl Schrag to Ellen G. 
Landau, March 14, 1982) 

XX S377B2 

Fine Prints Collection 

Prints and Photographs Division 

Library of Congress 







Mara Malliczky Schroetter 

(dates unknown) 

Wood engraving: Worker and Soldier 


Mara Malliczky Schroetter was a printmaker active in the Chicago, 
Illinois, area at the time of her submission to the “America in the War” 
exhibition. 


William Sharp 

( 1900 - 1961 ) 

Etching and aquatint: The New Order 


William Sharp was born June 13, 1900, in Lemburg, Austria. He studied 
there, in Cracow, Poland, and in England, France, and Germany (at the 
art academies in Munich and Berlin, 1918-20). During World War I, he 
served as a machine gunner for Germany on the Russian war front. 

After the First World War, Sharp became a newspaper artist in Berlin. 
Increasingly, he criticized the rising National Socialist movement 
through his drawings. He even submitted pseudonymous drawings to 
anti-Nazi publications, which put him in great danger. When found out, 
he was threatened with being sent to a concentration camp, w’hereupon 
he fled to the United States (1934). 

Working in this country as an illustrator, Sharp contributed drawings 
to the New York Mirror, the New York Post, Life, the New York Times 
Magazine, and Coronet. He worked on the artistic staffs of Esquire and 
PM. During his newspaper career, Sharp had many interesting assign¬ 
ments, not the least of which was covering the trial of Bruno Richard 


Hauptmann, accused of kidnapping the Charles Lindbergh baby. Sharp 
illustrated ten volumes for the Limited Editions Club, including such 
books as The Diary of Samuel Pepys and The Brothers Karamazov. 

Other publishers for whom he drew include the Illustrated Modern 
Library of Random House and the Heritage Press. 

Early in his career, while still in Germany, William Sharp did a series 
of lithographs satirizing the German law courts. He repeated this 
Daumieresque idea in the United States, producing in 1937 twelve 
lithographs for a series based on his experiences as a news illustrator in 
the New York Supreme Court. These works, grouped under the title 
“The Administration of Justice,” were shown at the Kennedy Galleries in 
New York. Other caricature series produced by Sharp in the 1930s 
include humorous looks at doctors, dentists, and the broadcasting 
profession. 

After 1938 William Sharp began to devote more time to etching and 
aqautint, as opposed to lithography. Pathos and deeply felt sympathy for 
the socially deprived replaced biting satire as his main theme in the 
early 1940s. Sharp won second prize in the intaglio category of the 
“America in the War” competition for a work which exhibits this type of 
theme. 

William Sharp, who won many prizes for his art throughout his career, 
had one man exhibitions at the Weyhe Gallery, the PM Gallery, and 
Kennedy & Company, all in New York City. He also exhibited etchings 
and aquatints on the theme of Don Quixote and Sancho Panza at 
Knoedler’s in the early 1940s. Sharp won a Joseph Pennell purchase 
prize at the Library of Congress in 1944 for one of the prints from this 
twenty-plate series. Examples of his work are in the permanent collec¬ 
tions of the Library of Congress, the New York Public Library, the Art 
Institute of Chicago, the Carnegie Institute, and the Metropolitan 
Museum of Art. The Graham Gallery in New York gave him a post¬ 
humous show in 1972. 


Sources 

The Administration of Justice: Twelve Lithographs by William Sharp. New York: 
Kennedy and Company, 1937. 

Devree, Howard. [Review of the Kennedy Exhibition]. New York Times, April 15, 
1937. 


99 





“Life in the U.S. Courtroom: Lithographs by William Sharp.” Scribner's, June 
1937, pp. 49 ff. 

Zigrosser, Carl. “William Sharp.” PM, an Intimate Journal for Production 
Managers (February/March 1940): 16 pp. insert. 

William Sharp: Etchings, Aquatints and Lithographs. Essay by Carl Zigrosser. New 
York: PM Gallery, January 12-February 5, 1940. 


Reese, Albert M. American Prize Prints of the 20th Century. New York: American 
Artists Group, 1949 (pp. 183, 254). 

“William Sharp, Illustrator, Dies; Magazine and Newspaper Critic.” New York 
Times, April 2, 1961. 

William Sharp. Comment by Daniel Schwarz. New York: Graham Gallery, 
February 5-26, 1972. 


Fig. 31 

The New Order 

William Sharp (1900-1961) 

Etching and aquatint, not dated 
(19.7x25.1 cm) 

2/15, signed in pencil 

XXS532A2 

Fine Prints Collection 

Prints and Photographs Division 

Library> of Congress 



100 









Harry Shokler 

(1896-1978) 

Color silkscreen: Air Raid Drill 


Harry Shokler was born in Cincinnati, Ohio, on April 25, 1896. Reject¬ 
ing a career in his father’s fur business, he studied art at the Cincinnati 
Art Academy, the summer school of the Pennsylvania Academy of the 
Fine Arts, and the New York School of Fine and Applied Art. During 
World War I, Shokler served with the American Expeditionary Forces 
overseas. In the 1920s he painted academic portraits of such notable 
figures as Babe Ruth and Ty Cobb. 

Harry Shokler was awarded a Freiburg Traveling Scholarship in 1929, 
which he used to go to Paris and take classes at the Academie Colorossi. 
He also traveled extensively on this trip abroad. First, he went to Con- 
carneau on the Brittany coast, where he came under the liberating influ¬ 
ence of the landscapes of resident artist Jerome Blum. Shokler painted, 
for a time, on the Cote d’Azur, and then lived for a year in Kairouan, 
Tunisia, where he met his wife, the only American in residence there. 
Shokler also visited Italy and Germany, returning finally to Paris where 
he had a one-man exhibition of paintings at the Galerie de Marsan. 

Harry Shokler had over fifty 7 solo exhibitions throughout his career, 
including shows at the Fifteen Gallery, the Schneider-Gabriel Galleries, 
the Grand Central Art Galleries, the Serigraph Galleries, and Kennedy 
& Company in New York City, as well as the Baltimore Museum of Art, 
the Syracuse Museum of Fine Arts, the Princeton Print Club, and the 
Traxel Galleries in Cincinnati. Shokler had six one-man shows at the 
Southern Vermont Art Center. 

During the early years of the depression, Harry 7 Shokler worked on the 
Public Works of An Project, predecessor of the W.P.A. He was a member 
of the experimental silkscreen group which founded the Workshop 
School on East 10th Street in 1940. Beginning in 1934 he and his wife 
would spend part of the year near Londonderry, Vermont, where he 
taught oil painting for the Southern Vermont artists and became a fellow 
of the MacDowell Colony in Peterborough, New Hampshire. 

In 1942, Harry 7 Shokler participated in the A.C.A. Gallery’s “Artists in 
the War” exhibition and in 1943 he had a joint showing with Leonard 
Pytlak, another of the artists in “America in the War.” The following year, 
the International Print Society commissioned a special edition of prints 


by Shokler, and in 1946 Shokler wrote the Artists’ Manual for Silkscreen 
Printmaking, which was published by the American Artists Group. 
Shokler lectured extensively on serigraphy and taught it at Princeton 
University and Columbia University, among others. 

Harry Shokler won many awards for his an over the years and exhi¬ 
bited in numerous group shows all over the United States. While in 
Europe early in his career, he showed in the Paris Salon. Examples of his 
work are part of the permanent collections of the Metropolitan Museum 
of Art, the Philadelphia Museum of Art, the Carnegie Institute, the Library 
of Congress, the Syracuse Museum, the Newark Museum, the Cincinnati 
Public Library 7 , the Princeton Print Club, the Munson-Williams-Proctor 
Institute, and the Dayton Art Institute. 

Sources 

“Paintings on View at the Schneider-Gabriel.” Pictures on Exhibit 2 (January 7 
1939): 11,33. 

"Late Afternoon (Silkscreen Print).” Pictures on Exhibit A (March 1941): 25-26. 

Paintings and Silkscreen Prints by Harry Shokler. Essay by Anthony Volon is. New 
York: Schneider-Gabriel Galleries, March 17-29, 1941. 

“Exhibit by Harry 7 Shokler.” Syracuse Museum Quarterly Bulletin (April-June 
1943). 

“Heights Can’t Resist Print of Penny Bridge.” Brooklyn Eagle, 

February 28, 1947, p. 15. 

Reese, Albert M. American Prize Prints of the 20th Century. New York: American 
Artists Group, 1949 (pp. 185, 254). 

Namsfield, Ruth. “Vermont Artist Swaps Art for Materials to Build His Studio.” 
Boston Sunday Post, June 26, 1949, p. 40. 

Harr\> Shokler Retrospective Exhibition of Paintings and Serigraphs 1920-1971. 
Essay by Dahris Martin Shokler. Manchester, Vt.: Southern Vermont Art Center, 
July 15-30,1972. 




Henry Simon 

(b.1901) 

Lithograph: The Three Horsemen 


Henry Simon was born November 10, 1901, in Poland. He came to the 
United States in 1906, settling in Chicago, Illinois, and he became a 
naturalized American citizen twenty years later. Simon, a painter, print 
maker, muralist, photographer, and designer of electric signs, received 
his art training at the school of the Art Institute of Chicago. 

From 1927 to 1934 Henry Simon painted theatrical posters and stage 
sets for Chicago theater groups. From 1938 to 1942, he worked on the 
Illinois Federal Art Project of the W.P.A., in both the mural and easel divi¬ 
sions. During the Spanish Civil War, he contributed drawings to Neu' 
Masses magazine, and he had his first one-man exhibition of lithographs 
at the Weyhe Gallery in New York in 1939, a showing selected by Carl 
Zigrosser. That same year Simon installed two murals made under W.P.A. 
auspices in the Cook County Hospital. 

In the early 1940s Simon won several mural commissions, which 
resulted in decorations for the Liberty' Ship, U.S.S. Hayes (1941), and the 
Treasury Department Section of Painting and Sculpture-sponsored wall 
designs for post offices in Osborne, Ohio (1941), and DeQueen, Arkan¬ 
sas (1942). Also in 1942, under Illinois W.P.A. project sponsorship, he 
painted two tempera-on-gesso panels for McKenry College, w'hich are 
now in the Wells High School in Chicago. 

From 1944 to 1945 Henry Simon served as art director for the Hull 
House in Chicago. In the mid fifties he began his career as an electric 
sign designer, which lasted until 1971. For reference material in this 
new career, he began photographing existing neon signs. This led to his 


decision to take pictures of street scenes and people to use in his paint¬ 
ings. By 1963, w r hen he attended photography classes at the Horwich 
Community Center in Chicago, he began to develop his interest in pho¬ 
tography as an art form, not just as a visual aid. In 1973 he had his first 
one-man show of photographs at the Chicago Art Institute. It comprised 
shots of Chicago scenes with particular concentration on store window 
mannequins and merchandise fused with their reflections to achieve 
abstract effects. 

Throughout his career, Henry Simon has exhibited his paintings and 
prints in many group presentations. Some of these have been sponsored 
by the Art Institute of Chicago, the Weyhe Gallery, the American Federa¬ 
tion of Arts, the International Print Society, and the Spertus Museum of 
Judaica. In 1942 he exhibited a lithograph in the large Artists for Victory 
exhibition at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. His awards have included 
two honorable mentions (in addition to his commissions) from the U.S. 
Treasury Department and three recent prizes, given in 1981-82, from the 
Jewish American Art Club. After a Surrealist period in the 1960s, Simon’s 
most recent work, done in oil, pastel, and mixed media, is abstract. 

Sources 

Davey, Alice Bradley. [Review], Chicago Sun, June 11, 1942. 

Haydon, Harold. [Review of Chicago Art Institute photography exhibition]. 
Chicago Sun Times, March 30, 1973- 





Fig- 32 

The Three Horsemen 

Henry Simon, b. 1.901 

Lithograph, not dated 
(22.4x32.7 cm) 

Signed with initials on stone, signed 
in pencil 


“The Three Horsemen was inspired 
by the four horsemen of the Apoca¬ 
lypse who ride roughshod over the 
land spreading death and destruc¬ 
tion. The three horsemen in the litho¬ 
graph are Hitler, Hirohito, and Musso¬ 
lini. The symbol of the swastika 
applies to all three. The Japanese 


emperor is. . . used as a symbol of the 
militaristic Japan of the Second 
World War. Hitler's raised arm is the 
Heil Hitler’ used by his followers as a 
salute. Mussolini carries a symbol of 
the Old Roman Empire. ” (Henry> 
Simon to Ellen G. Landau, May 10, 
1982 ) 


Gift of the Artist 

XX S5945A1 

Fine Prints Collection 

Prints and Photographs Division 

Library> of Congress 


103 




Burr Singer 

(b.1912) 

Lithograph: Letters from Home 


Burr Singer was born in St. Louis, Missouri, on November 20, 1912. 
She has lived in Los Angeles, California, for most of her life, however. 
She studied at the St. Louis School of Fine Arts, the Art Institute of 
Chicago, the Art Students League in New York, and with Walter Ufer in 
Taos, New Mexico. 

Singer is well-known in the Los Angeles area as a portraitist, and her 
commissions include paintings of Dr. Reiss and Dr. Davis, for the Reiss- 
Davis Clinic for Child Guidance in Los Angeles. During World War II, 
she worked as a volunteer sketch artist for the Hollywood U.S.O., doing 
pastel and charcoal portraits of servicemen, an experience which con¬ 
tributed to the idea for the print she submitted to the “America in the 
War” exhibition, depicting lonesome sailors reading letters from home. 

Burr Singer’s first solo exhibition was held at the Chabot Gallery, Los 
Angeles, in 1949. Since then, she has had more than twenty-five such 
shows, primarily at the Esther Robles Gallery, the Cafe Galleria, the 
Comara Gallery, and the Kramer Gallery, all in her home city, as well as 
one at the San Francisco Museum of Art. 

Singer taught painting and drawing for twenty-five years and has won 
many prizes in group shows all over the country'. She exhibited in both 
the New York and San Francisco World’s Fairs. In 1972, Singer accom¬ 
panied her husband, Harry I. Friedman, to Costa Rica, where she lived 
and painted for fourteen months. Examples of her work may be seen at 
the Warren Flynn School in Clayton, Missouri, the Beverly-Fairfax Jewish 
Community Center, and the Eaton Paper Collection, as well as at the 
Library of Congress. Her current work is primarily in watercolor and 
mixed media. 


Sources 

“Area Artist Burr Singer Will Move to Costa Rica.” Northwest Leader, May 18, 

1972. 

Collins, J. L. Women Artists in America, 18th Century’ to the Present. Chatta¬ 
nooga: University of Tennessee, 1973. 

Who's Who of American Women: 1958, 1961, 1964. 

Who's Who in American Art: 1940 through the 1970s. 


William Soles 

(b.1914) 

Woodcut: The Freedoms Conquer 


William Soles, a sculptor, teacher, and craftsman as well as a print- 
maker, was born in New York City on April 20, 1914. He studied at the 
Art Students League and with sculptor Alfeo Faggi. During the depres¬ 
sion, Soles worked in the Graphic Arts Division of the W.P.A. Fine Arts 
Project in New York. By 1947, however, Soles had turned his attention 
primarily to sculpture. 

Among the awards won by William Soles for his art are a St. Gaudens 
medal and the Keith Memorial Prize from the Woodstock Art Associa¬ 
tion, as well as second prize in the relief category' of the “America in the 
War” competition. He once stated of his entry, The Freedoms Conquer, 
that he had tried to translate into graphic terms his feelings about the 
war as conflict. Soles believed strongly that a work of art should encom¬ 
pass some idea and be more than merely decorative (letter to Albert M. 
Reese, Archives of American Art, Washington, D.C.). 

William Soles has shown in many group exhibitions, for example, at 
the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Weyhe Gallery, Kennedy & Com¬ 
pany, the Philadelphia Museum of Art, and the Library' of Congress (in a 
Pennell memorial show). He had moved from New York City out to the 
active artists’ colony in East Hampton, Long Island, by the mid-1960s, 
and has participated in numerous shows in that area at the Sigma 
Gallery, Guild Hall, the Southampton Gallery, and the Parrish Art 
Museum. Soles has been called upon to execute a number of ceramic 
murals for private homes. Another example of his prints is in the collec¬ 
tion of the New York Public Library'. 

Sources 

Reese, Albert M. American Prize Prints of the 20th Century’. New York: American 
Artists Group, 1949 (pp. 190, 255). 

Who's Who in American Art: 1966. 






Fig. 33 

The Freedoms Conquer 

William Soles, b. 1914 

Woodcut, not dated (23 x 30.4 cm ) 
Signed on block, signed in pencil 


"Like everyone during the war, / was 
much concerned about its outcome, 
and our aims in it. Consequently, my 
prints of that period reflected that 
concern, and The Freedoms Conquer 
was one of that group. I do not believe 
that one print can do very> much, but 
it adds to the force of a belief if many 
artists battle away at an idea. 


"Of course, ideas, aims, and hopes 
alone do not make a good print. My 
feeling about the war as conflict I 
tried to translate into graphic terms, 
opposing black against white, form 
against form, diagonals piercing the 
dignity of verticals, destroying the 
peace of horizontals. ” 


XXS685A1 

Fine Prints Collection 

Prints and Photographs Division 

Library> of Congress 


105 








Moses Soyer 

(1899-1974) 

Lithograph: War Workers 


Moses Soyer was born Moses Schoar on December 25, 1899, in 
Borisoglebsk, Government of Tambov, Russia. His twin brother, Raphael, 
and younger brother, Isaac, also became artists. All three were first 
exposed to art at the Tretiakoff Gallery in Russia in 1910 and were 
taught to draw by their father. Abraham Schoar was a Hebrew teacher 
and the liberal intellectual leader of their small Jewish community. In 
1912 Abraham Schoar was ordered to leave Russia, and the family emi¬ 
grated first to Philadelphia and then to the Bronx, in New York, where 
they settled. 

The Soyer brothers were encouraged to draw and paint at home and 
often competed with one another. Moses and Raphael attended the 
Cooper Union and the National Academy of Design. Because their styles 
were so similar, they eventually decided to switch to different art 
schools. Moses then studied at the Beaux Arts Institute of Design and 
the Educational Alliance, whereas Raphael continued his art education at 
the Art Students League. 

Around 1920, Moses Soyer discovered the weekend sketch classes at 
the Ferrer Club in Spanish Harlem. There he met George Bellows and 
Robert Henri, who criticized his work for him. Henri introduced Soyer 
to a lithograph by Daumier, in the Liberator, which was to have a pro¬ 
found effect on his art. Moses Soyer eventually specialized in the same 
kind of sad-eyed, psychologically soulful portraits that he saw in 
Daumier. War Workers, his entry to “America in the War,” is evidence of 
this. 

In 1926 Moses Soyer participated in his first group show, at J.B. Neu¬ 
mann’s New Art Circle. The following year Neumann gave him his first 
one-man exhibition. In the 1920s, Moses Soyer also began his career as a 
teacher of art. He taught on the faculties of the Educational Alliance, the 
Contemporary School of Art, and the New School for Social Research. 
Later, in 1941, he would become director of the New Art School, which 
he and his brothers founded. 


In the 1930s, Moses Soyer worked for the Public Works of Art Project 
and the Fine Arts Project of the W.P.A. He painted murals, under 
government auspices, for the Greenpoint Hospital in Brooklyn and the 
Municipal Building in New York City. He and his brother Raphael 
painted a set of complementary panels for the Kingsessing post office in 
Philadelphia, working separately on opposite walls. Moses Soyer had a 
one-man at the Kleeman Gallery in 1935 and three such solo showings 
at the Macbeth Gallery in the early 1940s. Beginning in the mid-forties, 
and until the end of his career, he was represented by the A.C.A. Gallery, 
which in 1944 published the first monograph on his work. 

Moses Soyer continued to show in individual and group exhibitions 
from the 1950s through the 1970s. In 1964, he wrote Painting the 
Human Figure, and two years later he was elected to the National Insti¬ 
tute of Arts and Letters. The A.C.A. Gallery orgnized a major retrospective 
of his work in 1972, which traveled all over the LJnited States. Moses 
Soyer’s work may be seen in such collections as the Metropolitan 
Museum of Art, the Museum of Modern Art, the Whitney Museum of 
American Art, the National Academy of Design, and the University of 
Kansas Museum. 


Sources 

Soyer, Moses. “Three Brothers.” Magazine of Art 32 (April 1939): 201-7. 

“Moses Soyer, Isaac Soyer, Raphael Soyer.” Current Biography ( 1941): 809-13 

Smith, Bernard. Moses Soyer. New York: A.C.A.Gallery, 1944. 

Willard, Charlotte. Moses Soyer. Foreword by Philip Evergood. Cleveland and 
New York: World Publishers, 1962. 

Moses Soyer. Essay by Milton W. Brown. New York: A.C.A. Gallery, 1962. 


106 




Werner, Alfred, and David Soyer. Moses Soyer. South Brunswickand New York: A.S. 
Barnes & Co., 1970. 

Moses Soyer: Drawings, Watercolors. Foreword by George Albert Perret. New 
York: A.C.A. Gallery, 1972. 

Soyer, Moses, and Peter Robinson. Oil Painting in Progress. New York: Van 
Nostrand Reinhold Co., 1972. 

Moses Soyer. A Human Approach. Foreword by Martin H. Bush. New York: A.C.A. 
Gallery, 1972. 

“Moses Soyer, 74, Dead; Traditional U.S. Painter.” New York Times, September 3, 
1974. 


Raphael Soyer 

(b.1899) 

Lithograph: Farewell 


Raphael Soyer was born on December 25, 1899, in Borisoglebsk, 
Government of Tambov, Russia. His early life was identical to that of his 
twin brother Moses, already described. Raphael Soyer studied art at the 
Cooper Union from 1914 to 1917 and at the National Academy of Design 
from 1918 to 1922, primarily with George W. Maynard and Charles 
Courtney Curran. He also studied in the early 1920s at the Art Students 
League with Guy Pene du Bois and Boardman Robinson. In 1917 
Raphael Soyer purchased a small press, which he set up in his family’s 
apartment in the Bronx, so that he could begin making prints. He made 
his first lithograph in 1920. 

Raphael Soyer first exhibited in the Salons of America in 1926, and he 
soon began to show work regularly at the Whitney Studio Club. His first 
one-man show was held at the Daniel Gallery in 1931- During the 
depression, Soyer worked in the Graphic Arts division of the W.P.A. Fine 
Arts Project and painted a mural, with his brother Moses, for the 
Kingsessing, Pennsylvania, post office. In 1933, Raphael was able to 
switch from making lithographs with transfer paper to working directly 
on the stone. During the depression, he concentrated on frequently 
poignant, socially conscious subject matter, emphasizing the psychologi¬ 
cal effects on people of the hard times. He began the street scenes, 
introspective nudes, and other female subjects for which he later 
became most famous. Important influences on his art were Edgar Degas 
and Thomas Eakins. 

During the war years, Raphael Soyer and his brother were both signers 
of a call to American artists and writers to convene a congress in defense 
of culture against Fascism. He exhibited in the A.C.A. Gallery’s “Artists in 
the War” show in 1942, and his lithograph Farewell won honorable 
mention in the planographic division of the Artists for Victory “America 
in the War” competition. This work was based on scenes he glimpsed at 
Pennsylvania Station of servicemen saying goodbye to family and 
friends. 

Since his first solo showing at the Daniel Gallery, Raphael Soyer has 



had a great many other one-man exhibitions: in the 1930s at Curt Valen¬ 
tin, L’Elan, and the Frank Rehn galleries; and in the 1940s at Weyhe, the 
Philadelphia Art Alliance, and Associated American Artists, where he also 
showed frequently in the 1950s and 1960s. In the 1960s he also showed 
at A.C.A., the Forum Gallery, and others. In 1967 the Whitney Museum of 
American Art gave him a complete retrospective, and a major mono¬ 
graph was published by Associated American Artists covering his entire 
career. 

In 1968 the Division of Graphic Arts of the Smithsonian Institution 
had a special showing of Raphael Soyer’s art, which they held in col¬ 
laboration with the Washington Print Club, at the Museum of History 
and Technology. In 1977 the National Collection of Fine Arts gave him 
another retrospective of drawings and watercolors and in 1980, when, in 
honor of his eightieth birthday, Soyer gave his complete graphic oeuvre 
to the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, that institution also 
held a special show of his works and awarded him the James Smithson 
Founder’s Medal. This award was followed in 1981 by the very presti 
gious Gold Medal of the American Institute of Arts and Letters. 

Like his brother, Raphael Soyer was an art educator as well as a prac¬ 
ticing artist. In 1930 he taught at the radical John Reed Club and, from 
1933 to 1942, at his alma mater, the Art Students League. He was also on 
the faculty of the American Art School after World War II. From 1957 to 
1962, Raphael Soyer taught at the New School for Social Research. In 
recent years, Soyer has published a number of books. These include A 
Painter’s Pilgrimage (1967), Homage to Thomas Eakins, Etc. (1966), 

Self -Revealment and Memories (1969), and Diary of an Artist (1977 ). 


Sources 


Zigrosser, Carl. The Artist in America: 24 Close-Ups of Contemporary Print 
makers. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1942 (pp. 55-61). 

Raphael Soyer. New York: American Artists Group, 1946. 

Reese, Albert M. American Prize Prints of the 20th Century>. New York: American 
Artists Group, 1949 (pp. 191, 255). 

Gutman, Walter K. and Jerome Klein, Raphael Soyer, Paintings and Drawings. 
New York: Shorewood Pub. Co., I960. 

Goodrich, Lloyd. Raphael Soyer. New York: Whitney Museum of American Art 
and Praeger Publishers, 1967. 

Cole, Sylvan Jr., ed. Raphael Soyer: Fifty Years of Printmaking 1917-1967. 
Foreword by Jacob Kainen. New York: Da Capo Press, 1967. 

Raphael Soyer, An Exhibition of Drawings and Watercolors. Athens: Georgia 
Museum of Art, University of Georgia, 1968. 

Goodrich, Lloyd. Raphael Soyer. New York: Harp 1 N. Abrams, 1972. 

Canaday, John. “Raphael Soyer’s Lonely World.” New York Times, October 25, 
1972, p. 41. 

Flint, Janet A. Raphael Soyer: Drawings and Watercolors. Washington, D.C.: Pub¬ 
lished for the National Collection of Fine Arts by the Smithsonian Institution 
Press, 1977. 




Fig. 34 

Farewell 

Raphael Soyer, b. 1899 

Lithograph, undated (40.4 x31 -3 cm) 
Signed on stone, signed in pencil 
Printed by George Miller 

“During World War II l spent many 
hours at the Pennsylvania Railroad 
Station in New York watching Ameri¬ 
can soldiers going to war in Europe. I 
witnessed many moving scenes of 
soldiers bidding tbeir mothers, wives, 
and sweethearts farewell, and I made 
several oil paintings and the litho¬ 
graph of this subject. ” (Raphael Soyer 
to Ellen G. Landau, March 15, 1982) 

XXS7318B3 

Fine Prints Collection 

Prints and Photographs Division 

Library of Congress 


109 













Benton Murdoch Spruance 

(1904-1967) 

Lithograph: Souvenir of Lidice 


Benton Murdoch Spruance was born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, on 
June 25, 1904, of French and English ancestry. One of his forebears, 
named Esperance, came to America around 1700. Orphaned by his teen 
years, Benton Spruance was raised by his stepfather, who insisted that 
architecture was a more potentially lucrative field than fine art, so Spru¬ 
ance began his studies at the University of Pennsylvania in that field. 
Switching to painting there and then continuing to study painting at the 
Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts (PAFA) in the mid-1920s, Spru 
ance studied with George Harding and Roy Nuse, among others. When 
awarded two Cresson Traveling Fellowships from the PAFA in 1928 and 
1929, Spruance had the opportunity to study with Andre L’Hote in Paris. 

In the 1920s, the PAFA did not teach lithography. While in Europe, 
Spruance began to frequent lithography workshops to learn the tech 
nique, especially that of Desjobert in Paris. There he watched artists 
such as John Carroll and Yasuo Kuniyoshi create prints from lithographic 
stones. Desjobert allowed Spruance to work there as well as to observe 
and, when he returned to Philadelphia, Spruance began to use the ser¬ 
vices of German-born lithographer Theodore Cuno, who also printed for 
Joseph Pennell. 

In 1953, Benton Spruance acquired his own lithographic press and 
thereafter did all of his own printing, as well as mixing all of his own 
inks. Several years earlier, Spruance had received a Guggenheim Fellow¬ 
ship to explore lithography in color. Spruance, however, is probably 
best-known for his work in black and white. His prints of the thirties 
exhibited a socially conscious tendency which concentrated on the 
American scene, especially urban subject matter such as traffic, bridges, 
and skyscrapers. Unlike most American scene painters, however, Spru¬ 
ance’s compositions were frequently organized with an abstract frame¬ 
work and were sometimes stylized into patterns independent of the 
objects depicted. 

By the following decade, Spruance concentrated more on portraits, 
figures, and psychological studies. In the 1950s, his work took a more 
emotional turn, centering around biblical themes. This direction is fore¬ 
shadowed in his entry to “America in the War,” Souvenir of Lidice, 


which won first prize in the planographic division and in which count¬ 
less Pietas and Crucifixions are evoked. Spruance’s last great series, The 
Passion of Ahab, w 7 as inspired by a theological interpretation of Melville 
written by Lawrence Roger Thompson. 

Besides practicing art, Benton Spruance was also a dedicated art 
teacher. In 1933 he became professor of art and chairman of the 
department at Beaver College in Jenkintown, Pennsylvania, and from 
1934 to 1965 also taught at the Philadelphia College of Art, where he 
built up the department of printmaking. Both institutions awarded him 
honorary degrees. 

Spruance participated in many group exhibitions throughout his 
career, garnering many awards. A partial list of his one-man exhibitions 
includes those at the Division of Graphics Arts of the Smithsonian Insti¬ 
tution, the George Washington University, the Frank M. Rehn Gallery in 
New York, and the Associated American Artists. He had complete retro¬ 
spectives at the Philadelphia College of Art in 1967, at the June 1 Gallery 
of Fine Arts in Washington, D.C., in 1972, and at Sacred Heart University 
in Bridgeport, Connecticut, in 1973. In connection with the June 1 
Gallery exhibition, a symposium w 7 as held at the National Collection of 
Fine Arts entitled “Benton Spruance: A Lifetime in Service to Art.” Spru¬ 
ance’s work may be seen in such public collections as the Carnegie 
Institue, the National Gallery of Art, the Philadelphia Museum of Art, the 
New York Public Library, the Whitney Museum of American Art, and the 
Museum of Modern Art. 


Sources 

“Benton Spruance.” Original Etchings, Lithographs and Woodcuts. New York: 
American Artists Group, 1937 (pp. 43-44). 

“Intimate Glimpses: Lithographs by Benton Spruance.” Coronet6 (May 1939): 
92-97. 

Zigrosser, Carl. The Artist in America: 24 Close-Ups of Contemporary Print 
makers. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1942 (pp. 80-90). 


110 




Reese, Albert M. American Prize Prints of the 20th Century>. New York: American 
Artists Group, 1949 (pp. 193, 225). 

“Benton Spruance, Visiting Artist.” Munson-WilliamsProctor Institute Bulletin, 
January 1949, pp. 1, 4-5. 

“ Lithographer and Artist.” Washington Post, December 8, 1967. 

Benton Spruance, Lithographs 1932-1967. Essays by Lessing J. Rosenwald and 
Carl Zigrosser. Phila.: Philadelphia College of Art, 1967. 


Benton Spruance: A Retrospective. Four Decades of Lithography. Washington, 
D C.: June 1 Gallery'of Fine Art, 1972. 

Benton Spruance. Essays by John Canaday and William J. Fletcher. Bridgeport, 
Conn.: The Library Gallery, Sacred Heart University, March 9-April 1, 1973- 

Who's Who in American Art. 1937. 



Fig- 35 

Souvenir of Lidice 

Benton Murdock Spruance 
(1904-1967) 

Lithograph, 1943 (31 x 46.4 cm) 
Signed with initials on stone, signed 
and dated in pencil, edition of 35 

XXS771 B6 

Fine Prints Collection 

Prints and Photographs Division 

Library of Congress 






Harry Sternberg 

(b.1904) 

Color silkscreen: Fascism 


Harry Sternberg was born on July 19, 1904, in New York City. He grew 
up on the Lower East Side, the son of poor Jewish immigrants who 
wanted him to become a doctor, not an artist. He studied at the Art 
Students League with George Brant Bridgman and privately with Harry 
Wickey. 

Sternberg first took up etching in 1927. In 1932 he had his first one- 
man exhibition at the Weyhe Gallery, which consisted of his work since 
1928. During the depression, he was active in the organization of the 
American Artists Congress and taught for the W.P.A. While in the Gra¬ 
phics Division of the W.P.A. Fine Arts Project, he first experimented in 
serigraphy and offset lithography and was a member of the innovative 
silkscreen group that formed the Workshop School on Tenth Street. He 
painted murals for the Lakeview post office in Chicago, and the post 
offices in Sellersville and Chester, Pennsylvania. 

In 1936 Harry Sternberg was awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship to 
study the coal and steel industries in the depression and actually lived 
among the miners and steelworkers in Pennsylvania. He showed draw¬ 
ings from this project at Frederick Keppel & Company in 1937. Sternberg 
was chosen in 1937, 1938, and 1939 for 100 Fine Prints of the Year. 

Harry Sternberg was an instructor at the Art Students League from 1934 
to 1968. He was on the faculty of the New School for Social Research, 
1942-45, and he taught graphics as therapy at the Veterans Art Center of 
the Museum of Modern Art, 1944-48. During the war years, Sternberg 
was a very active and responsible member of the art community. In 
1942, he had three exhibitions, in New York, Hollywood, and Richmond, 
Virginia, which he dedicated to victory, and from which he donated 10 
percent of all proceeds to the Red Cross. He did three large aquatints 
with war subjects, praised by Carl Zigrosser as among the most impres¬ 
sive reactions to totalitarian war produced in this country. 

Harry Sternberg was one of the signers of a call to American artists and 
writers to convene in defense of culture against Fascism. He exhibited 
in the A.C.A. Gallery’s “Artists in the War,” and his silkscreen Fascism 
won honorable mention in the serigraphy division of the Artists for Vic¬ 
tory “America in the War” exhibition. Also in the forties, he illustrated 


two important antiwar pamphlets: “They Still Carry On! Native Fascists: 
How to Spot Them and Stop Them,” published by the War Department, 
and “Eleven Fundamentals for Organization of Peace in Pictures,” put 
out in 1944 by the Committee to Study the Organization of Peace, in 
New York. 

In the 1950s, Sternberg continued to exhibit frequently. A.C.A., Gare- 
lick’s Gallery, and the University of Minnesota all gave him complete 
graphic retrospectives. He taught in suburban New York and Connecti¬ 
cut until 1959, when he joined the faculty of the Idyllwild School of 
Music and Art in Los Angeles, where he stayed for ten years and where 
he shifted the emphasis in his art to landscape. The Llniversity of the 
South in Sewanee, Tennessee, gave him a retrospective in I960, which 
included examples from the work of former students who had them¬ 
selves become well-respected printmakers. 

In the early 1960s, Harry Sternberg got involved in the direction of 
two movies, The Many Worlds of Art (I960) and Art and Reality (1961). 
He has written a number of books on art as well, including how-to 
books on serigraphy, etching, woodcut, and artistic composition and a 
book entitled Realistic Abstract Art. 

Among the many prizes awarded Sternberg was a grant from the Insti¬ 
tute of Arts and Letters in 1972. His more recent work has evinced some¬ 
thing of a return to social commentary, and a catalogue raisonne of his 
oeuvre was published in 1975 by the LHrich Museum of Art, Wichita State 
University. Examples of his work may be seen at the Ulrich, the Museum 
of Modern Art, the Victoria and Albert Museum in London, the Whitney 
Museum of American Art, the Cleveland Museum of Art, and many 
others. 


Sources 

“Sternberg Puts Forth Principles.” New York Times, January 26, 1932. 

“Harry Sternberg—Graver and Painter.” Index of 20th Century Artists 3 (May 
1936): 295-96. 




Zigrosser, Carl. The Artist in America: 24 Close-ups of Contemporary’ Print- 
makers. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1942 (pp. 62-69). 

“Sternberg’s War Comment Wins Print Prize.” Art Digest 16 (May 1, 1942): 21. 

Sternberg, Harry. “War Art From the Bottom Up." Magazine of Art 36 (January 
1943): 3-5. 

Sternberg: 25 Years of Printmaking. New York: A.C.A. Gallery, 1953, 

The Prints of Harry’ Sternberg. Essays by Hudson Walker and Malcolm M. Willey. 
Minneapolis: University Gallery, University of Minnesota, 1957. 


Thirty Years of Graphics: Harry Sternberg. Essay by Carl Zigrosser. New York: 
Garelick’s Gallery, 1958. 

Suydam, Anne A. “Social Consciousness in American Graphic Art and Its Reflec¬ 
tion in the Prints of Harry Sternberg 1929-40.” Masters thesis, San Diego State 
College, June 1969. In the Harry Sternberg Papers, Archives of American Art, 
Washington, D.C. 

Moore, James. Harry’ Sternberg. A Catalogue Raisonne of His Graphic Work 
1927-1975. Wichita, Kansas: Edwin A. Ulrich Museum of Art, Wichita State Uni 
versity, 1975. 



Fig. 36 

Fascism 

Harry> Sternberg, b. 1904 

Color silkscreen, not dated 
(39 5 x 52.5 cm) 

“An art which is healthy is a social art. 
. . . The content in a broad sense and 
the symbolism in a close sense should 
be about people and for people. ” The 
creator of this print had “Guernica, 
with the horror of the German bomb¬ 
ing, in his mind. He wasn 't thinking 
about whether people would like it or 
not. The symbolism is ugly because it 
was an ugly story. ” (Art Students 
League News 1, no. 8, December 1, 
1948) 

XXS838 B4 

Fine Prints Collection 

Prints and Photographs Division 

Library’ of Congress 


113 




Agnes Tait 

(b.1897) 

Lithograph: The Survivors 


Agnes Tait was born June 14, 1897, in New York City. She studied at 
the National Academy of Design and later in France and Italy. In the 
1920s a reviewer noted Tait’s attachment, at that time, to the aesthetic 
ideals of the English Pre-Raphaelite group. In that decade, Tait painted 
many mural decorations for houses in New York and Palm Beach and 
participated in a show focusing on her and two other artists at the 
Dudensing Gallery (1928). Tait’s decorative period was followed by a 
concentration on landscape and then on portraits. She had her first solo 
showing of portraits at the Ferargil Galleries in New York in 1933- 

During the early years of the depression, Agnes Tait worked with both 
the easel painting and graphics sections of the Public Works of Art 
Project, predecessor of the W.P.A. Under federal auspices she executed 
murals for Bellevue Hospital and the U.S. post office at Laurinsburg, 
North Carolina. She also illustrated children’s books, including Peter 
and Penny of the Island and Heide, in the 1940s. 

By the time of the “America in the War” exhibition, Agnes Tait (then 
Mrs. William McNulty) had moved from New York City to Santa Fe, New 
Mexico. In 1958 she was given a large solo exhibition at the Albany 
Institute of History and Art. Tait has exhibited nationwide in numerous 
group shows, and examples of her work may be seen in the Metropoli¬ 
tan Museum of Art, the Library of Congress, and the New York Public 


Library'. A member of the National Association of Women Painters and 
Sculptors, she was chosen to be included in “Fourteen American 
Women Printmakers of the ’30s and ’40s,” a show organized by the Mt. 
Holyoke College Art Museum. 

Sources 

“Agnes Tait.” Handbook of the American Artists Group. New York, 1935 (pp. 
70-71). 

“Agnes Tait.” Original Etchings, Lithographs and Woodcuts Published by the 
American Artists Group, Inc. New York, 1937 (p. 44). 

Jones, Hester. “Current Exhibition at the Museum of New Mexico.” El Palacio 
55, no. 6 (1948): 184-87. 

Barlow, Heather. “Agnes Tait.” Fourteen American Women Printmakers of the 
30s and '40s. South Hadley, Mass, and New York: Mt. Holyoke College Art 
Museum and the Weyhe Gallery, 1973. 

\X'ho's Who in American Art: 1936-37, 1940-47, 1953- 


114 




Prentiss Hottel Taylor 

(b.1907) 

Litho-tint: Uprooted Stalk 


Prentiss Hottel Taylor was born in Washington, D.C., on December 13, 
1907. He studied an at the Corcoran Gallery of An and at the National 
School of Fine and Applied Ans with Isabel Sewell Hunter, Mary P. 
Shipman, Alexis Many, and Inez Hogan. He also worked with Charles 
Hawthorne during two summers in Provincetown, Massachusetts 
(1924-25), and with Ann Goldthwaite, Eugene Fitsch, and Charles Locke 
at the An Students League in New York. Fitsch and Locke taught Taylor 
lithography, beginning in 1931 ■ 

Taylor’s work in the 1920s was predominantly abstract but, when he 
took up lithography, he changed to a more conservative, realist style, 
emphasizing the American scene. In the 1930s, he spent four summers 
as a fellow at the MacDowell Colony in Peterborough, New Hampshire, 
strengthening this direction. 

During the years when Prentiss Taylor lived in New York (1926 
through the early 1930s), he followed, for a time, a childhood dream 
which was to design stage sets and costumes, working with Michio Ito, 
Stuart Walker, and others. In 1934 he worked on the Public Works of Art 
Project in that city. By 1936 he had moved to Arlington, Virginia, where 
he remains a resident. 

Prentiss Taylor had his first one-man show in 1927, at the Arts Club in 
Washington, D.C., and another there in 1929. In the 1930s, he exhibited 
at the New York World’s Fair and had several solo showings, including 
one at the Public Library of Washington, D.C., in 1938 and another at the 
Frank M. Rehn Galleries in New York that same year. He directed a class 
in lithography at Studio House in Washington in 1935 and illustrated a 
number of books, including The Negro Mother (1931), Scottsboro 
Limited ( 1932) by Langston Hughes, Why Birds Sing { 1933), and The 
American Herb Calendar (1937). In 1938 and again in 1944, he was 
chosen for Fifty American Prints of the Year. 

During the war years, Prentiss Taylor’s work was included in a show of 
prints selected by Carl Zigrosser for the Office of War Information. One 
of his many one-man exhibitions at Whyte Gallery in Washington in the 


mid 1940s included a number of war subjects, some with Christian allu¬ 
sions similar to the Pieta theme of Uprooted Stalk, Taylor’s entry to 
“America in the War.” 

Also in the 1940s, Taylor was commissioned to paint two murals, one 
in a private home and one in the Christian Science Headquarters in 
Washington, D.C. During the war, he began to teach art therapy at St. 
Elizabeth’s Hospital and organized public showings of his patients’ 
works. He remained there until 1954 and from 1958 to 1978 did similar 
work at Chestnut Lodge in Rockville, Maryland. President of the Society 
ofWashington Etchers in these years, he had important shows at 
Howard University (“My First Ten Years at Lithography,” 1942) and the 
Division of Graphic Arts of the Smithsonian Institution (1947). 

In 1950 the United Nations Club did a seventeen-year survey of 
Taylor’s career, and a forty-year survey was done in 1971 at the Franz 
Bader Gallery in Washington, D.C. In the 1950s, Taylor was involved 
with organizing and staging exhibitions at the Playhouse Art Gallery in 
Virginia and the American Institute of Architects. He taught for the 
Y.W.C.A. and American University. In 1961 Taylor was guest printmaker 
at The Tamarind Lithography Workshop. His most recent one-man show, 
at Bader Gallery, took place in 1981. 

Public collections in which Prentiss Taylor’s work may be seen 
include those at the Museum of Modern Art, the Phillips Collection, the 
New York Public Library, the National Museum of American Art, and Yale 
University. 

Sources 

Original Etchings, Lithographs, and Woodcuts Published by the American Artists 
Group. New York, 1937 (p. 45). 

Salpeter, Harry. “About Prentiss Taylor.” Coronet 5 (April 1939): 134-42. 


115 




My First Ten Years at Lithography. Prints by Prentiss Taylor. Essay by Adelyn D. 
Breeskin. Washington, D.C.: Howard University Gallery of Art, April 26-May 
1942. 


“Taylor Strives for Space and Air.” Washington Post, April 26, 1953, 3L. 


“Taylor Art on Display at Bader.” Washington Star, May 20, 1956. 
Cohen, A. “Prentiss Taylor.” D C. Gazette, 1970. 

Forty Years of Lithographs by Prentiss Taylor 1931-1971. Essay by Carl 
Zigrosser. Washington, D.C.: Franz Bader Gallery, April 21-May 8, 1971. 

Who’s Who in American Art: 1940-47, 1953. 


Reese, Albert M. American Prize Prints of the 20th Century. New York: American 
Artists Group, 1949 (pp. 198, 255). 


Fig. 37 

Uprooted Stalk 

Prentiss Hottel Taylor, b. 1907 

Litho-tint, 1943 (26.2 x 31-6 cm) 
34/35, signed with initials on stone, 
signed and dated in pencil 

XXT243A15 

Fine Prints Collection 

Prints and Photographs Division 

Library of Congress 



116 








Harry Frederick Tepker 

(dates unknown) 

Lithograph: Mountain Mortar Firing 


Harry Frederick Tepker was active in the Colorado Springs, Colorado, 
area at the time of his submission to the “America in the War” exhibi 
tion. In 1945, by then a private first class in the U.S. Marine Corps, he 
exhibited a watercolor depicting Tetere Beach, Guadalcanal, in “The 
War against Japan” exhibition. This exhibition, organized by the U.S. 
Treasury Department to stimulate the purchase of war bonds, was com 
prised of works executed by painters sent to the Pacific theater by the 
U.S. Marines, U.S. Navy, U.S. War Department, and Life magazine. 

Tepker was apparently one of the few artists associated with the 
“America in the War” project who experienced active combat, though 
perhaps not before he submitted his print to Artists for Victory. After the 
war, Harry Frederick Tepker took part in two national exhibitions of 
prints sponsored by the Library of Congress, in 1950 and 1955. At that 
time he was a resident of California. 


Sources 

The War against Japan. Washington, D.C.: National Gallery' of Art, 1945. 


Fig. 38 

Mountain Mortar Firing 

Harry> Frederick Tepker 
(dates unknown) 

Lithograph, 1943 (39 8 x 29-3 cm) 
Signed and dated in pencil 

“When it comes to courage, it is 
rightly taken for granted that no 


marine combat artist would be lack¬ 
ing. . . . Marines like PFC Harry> F. 
Tepir know from experience the full 
meaning of the term 'Leatherneck. 
(Forbes Watson papers) 

XXT313B1 

Fine Prints Collection 

Prints and Photographs Division 

Library’ of Congress 


F.V 



1 17 






Sophia Thanos 

(dates unknown) 

Linoleum block: United Knockout Blow 


Sophia Thanos was active as an artist in the Oakland, California, area 
at the time of her submission to the “America in the War” exhibition. 
She participated in the 1947 National Exhibition of Prints sponsored by 
the Library of Congress. 


Joseph S. Trovato 

(1912-1983) 

Woodcut: Notice from the Draft Board 


Joseph S. Trovato was born in Guardaville, Italy, on February 6, 1912. 
He came to the United States in 1920, settling in Utica, New York. He 
studied at the Utica Art School and in the early 1930s in New York City, 
at the Art Students League and the National Academy of Design. In the 
latter part of that decade, he received a fellowship to the School of 
Related Arts and Sciences in Utica sponsored by the Munson-Williams- 
Proctor Institute. In the early 1940s, he continued his studies at the 
Munson-Williams-Proctor. 

From 1933 to 1936 Joseph Trovato taught W.P.A. an classes and 
worked on the W.P.A. Mural Project, in addition to directing an art 
school connected with the Lltica Conservatory of Music. In 1939 he 
became assistant to the director of the Munson-Williams Proctor Insti 
tute, a position he retained until his retirement in 1982. His duties there 
included general museum administration and the organization and 
installation of exhibitions and preparation of their accompanying cata¬ 
logs. Shows for which Trovato was responsible include the Armory Show 
Anniversary Exhibition (1963) and a memorial exhibition of the works 
of Charles Burchfield (1970). 

From 1958 to 1969 Trovato also did curatorial and administrative work 


for the Edward W. Root Center at Hamilton College in Clinton, New 
York. He received an honorary doctorate in fine arts from that institution 
in 1963 and taught there as a visiting assistant professor of art, 1965-66. 
From 1974 to 1980 he taught at the School of Art of the Munson- 
Williams-Proctor Institute and in the spring of 1976 was also an associate 
professor at Kirkland College. Among his publications are Portraiture: 
The 19th and 20th Centuries (1957), Learning about Pictures from Mr. 
Root (1965), George Luks (1973), The Olympics in Art (1980), and an 
article in Art in America on the Armory Show (February' 1963)- 

Trovato, in his career as a museum professional, has also worked as a 
field researcher for the Archives of American An (1964-66), taping 
interviews with artists and administrators of the W.P.A. for a project 
entitled “The New Deal and the Arts.” He served as a consultant to the 
New York State Council on the Arts, 1966-67, and he also served on 
many juries for exhibitions throughout upstate New York and in 
Pennsylvania. 

In his capacity as an artist, Trovato has exhibited in a number of 
upstate New York group exhibitions. He had twelve one-man showings 
after 1950 at such locations as Colgate LJniversity, the Munson-Williams- 
Proctor Institute, Utica College of Syracuse LJniversity, the Albany Insti¬ 
tute of History and Art, the Edward W. Root Center of Hamilton College, 
the Everson Museum of Art in Syracuse, the Kirkland Art Center in Clin¬ 
ton, New York, and Gallery' II, Oneida, New'York. His work is in the 
permanent collections of many of these same institutions and in numer¬ 
ous private collections. 

Sources 

“Paintings by Joseph Trovato.” Munson-Williams-Proctor Institute Bulletin 
(October 1952): [4], 

Paintings by Joseph S. Trovato. Essay by James Penney. Clinton, New York: 
Hamilton and Kirkland Colleges, January 11-February 11, 1976. 

Who’s Who in American Art: 1966. 





Donald Vogel 

(b. 1902) 

Drypoint: Swing Shift 


Donald Vogel was born in Poland on December 24, 1902. He came to 
the United States at the age of eight and received his early education in 
the New York City public schools. He studied art at the Parsons School 
of Design and earned both a bachelor of science and a master of arts 
degree from Columbia University. He later became an instructor in fine 
arts at the High School of Art and Design on Second Avenue. 

A contributor to Print Collector’s Quarterly, La Revue moderne, and 
other journals, Vogel has won awards for his art from the Munson- 
WilHams-Proctor Institute (1943), the Northwest Printmakers (1943 and 
1946), and the Library' of Congress (1950). He was chosen to receive the 
third prize in the intaglio division of the “America in the War” competi¬ 
tion for a drypoint depicting the change in shifts for defense work at the 
Peerless Coal Company. 

Donald Vogel has exhibited in numerous other group shows 
throughout his career, at such places as the National Academy of Design, 
the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, the J.B. Speed Museum, and 
the Flint Institute of Art. His work is in the permanent collections of the 
Seattle Art Museum, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Pennsylvania 
State University, the Munson-Williams-Proctor Institute, and the Society 
of American Graphic Artists. 

Sources 

Reese, Albert M. American Prize Prints of the 20th Century. New York: American 
Artists Group, 1949 (pp. 204, 256). 

Who's Who in American Art: 1953-80. 



Fig. 39 

Swing Shift 

Donald Vogel, b. 1902 

Drypoint, not dated (17.8 x 22.8 cm) 
18/40, signed in pencil 

XX V878A2 

Fine Prints Collection 

Prints and Photographs Division 

Library of Congress 


119 















Sylvia Wald 

(b.1914) 

Color silkscreen: The Boys 


Sylvia Wald was born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, on October 30, 
1914. She studied at the Moore Institute of Art, Science, and Industry 
there and, upon graduation, taught on the W.P.A. Federal An Project in 
Philadelphia. In 1937 she moved to New York City, where she continued 
to teach for the W.P.A. 

The following year, Wald was the winner of the A.C.A. Gallery’s third 
annual competition for a first New York show, sponsored by the Ameri¬ 
can Anists Congress. There were over two hundred competitors for this 
honor, which resulted in her first solo exhibition, held at the A.C.A. 
Gallery in May 1939 and comprising both painting and sculpture. 

It was in conjunction with the A.C.A. show that Sylvia Wald first began 
to experiment with printmaking. The gallery asked her to reproduce two 
of her paintings by silkscreen, and she became fascinated with the possi¬ 
bilities of this multiple-copy and less expensive medium. Shortly after, 
she became associated with the innovative Silkscreen Group, which 
founded the Workshop School in New York in 1940. Later, during World 
War II, when she accompanied her husband, Dr. Alter Weiss, to an army 
base at Louisville, Kentucky, she worked on more fully developing her 
silkscreen style and technique, since she had no adequate studio space 
for sculpture or painting. 

Sylvia Wald had another solo show of paintings and prints in the early 
1940s sponsored by the New School Associates. She took part in an 
exhibition organized to accompany the American Writers and Artists 
Congresses’ 1941 symposium, “In Defense of Culture,” and was one of 
the illustrators of a book published as part of this exhibition, Winter 
Soldiers, which depicted through drawings the attempt of teachers to 
defend free public education. In 1942 she showed both a sculpture and 
an oil in the A.C.A. Gallery’s “Artists in the War” exhibition. Her entry in 
the Artists for Victory graphic competition, The Boys, which depicts a 
group of black soldiers, probably reflects her wartime experience living 
on an army installation in the South. 

Throughout her career, Wald has participated in numerous group 
exhibitions in the United States, Europe, Japan, Israel, and South Amer¬ 
ica, winning many prizes. One-person showings, in addition to those 


already mentioned, include two each at the University of Louisville and 
the Serigraph Gallery, New York, and others at Kent State University, the 
Grand Central Moderns Gallery, the Briarcliff Public Library, and the 
Devorah Sherman Gallery in Chicago. The University of Louisville sent a 
show of Wald’s works on tour from 1952 to 1956. 

In the past decade, Sylvia Wald has actively participated in many 
women artists’ shows, sponsored by such groups as Women in the Arts 
and the Women’s Interart Center, Inc. She took part in the 1973 exhibi¬ 
tion at the New York Cultural Center “Women Choose Women.” Her 
work is in such public collections as the Museum of Modern Art, the 
Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Whitney Museum of American Art, the 
Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, the Brooklyn Museum, the National 
Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C., and the National Gallery of Canada. 

Sources 

Sylvia Wald: Paintings/Prints during April. Essay by Herman Baron. New York: 
New School Associates, n.d. [probably early 1940s]. 

“Meet the Artist: Sylvia Wald of New York City.” Serigraph Quarterly A 
(November 1948): 3- 

“Sylvia Wald.” University of Louisville Allen R. Hite Institute, no. 8 (April 1949). 
[Review]. New York Times, February 24, 1954. 

"Library to Exhibit Sylvia Wald’s Prints.” Citizen Register, Ossining, N.Y., June 4, 
1965. 

Collins, J. L. Women Artists in America, 18th Century to the Present. Chatta¬ 
nooga: University of Tennessee, 1973. 

Who's Who in American Art: 1953-80. 


120 




Charles Banks Wilson 

(b.1918) 

Lithograph : Freedom's Warrior—American Indian 


Charles Banks Wilson was born in Miami, Oklahoma, on August 6, 
1918. Part Cherokee and part Choctaw Indian, his native name 
“Tsungani” translates as “excels all others.” Wilson, who grew up in a 
settlement of thirteen different Indian tribes, went to Chicago to study 
art at the Art Institute and, in 1938, took his first lithography class there. 
Some of his teachers include Francis Chapin, Louis Ritman, Boris Anis- 
feld, and Hubert Ropp. In 1941 he traveled to New York City with a 
recommendation from Regionalist painter Aaron Bohrod to Associated 
American Artists, for whom Wilson has since made many prints. 

Since that time, Wilson’s primary subject matter has related to Indian 
life. In the early 1940s, he wrote an article for This Week magazine about 
the Indian participation in World War II. Entitled “No War Whoops, 

But . . .” and illustrated with a lithograph depicting an American Indian 
in army uniform holding an American flag, this article pointed out that 
the U.S. armed forces, since Pearl Harbor, included about twelve thou¬ 
sand Indians and that the 180th Infantry from Oklahoma and Kansas had 
so many Indians that its motto was in Choctaw. The illustration for this 
article, Freedom's Warrior, became Charles Banks Wilson’s entry to 
“America in the War.” 

A two-page spread in Collier’s magazine devoted to his work gave a 
large boost to Wilson’s career in the early 1940s and, in 1946, the Divi¬ 
sion of Graphic Arts of the Smithsonian Institution gave him a one-man 
exhibit in Washington, D.C. Another one-man exhibition was held in 
1952 at the Philbrook Art Center in Tulsa, Oklahoma, and more followed 
at the Oklahoma Art Center, the Springfield Museum of Art, the Univer¬ 
sity of Tulsa, the Gilcrease Institute, and the New York World’s Fair 
(1964-65). 

Beginning in 1948 (and until I960), Wilson was director of the art 
department of Northeastern Oklahoma A. and M. College. In the mid- 
1950s he was commissioned by John D. Rockefeller, Jr., to paint a mural 
for Jackson Lake Lodge in the Teton National Park in Wyoming. Entitled 
The Trapper’s Bride, this decoration presented a historical picture of the 
fur trade in the West. 


The following year, Charles Banks Wilson helped famed Regionalist 
painter Thomas Hart Benton to obtain authentic Indian models for a 
mural on the subject of the St. Lawrence Seaway. He also assisted Benton 
with research for the latter’s Truman Library mural and, in return, Ben¬ 
ton taught Wilson how to work in the egg tempera method, which has 
been Wilson’s primary' medium since that time. Charles Banks Wilson 
has done several portraits of Benton, who became a great friend and 
artistic influence. 

Another portrait by Wilson is that of Chief Whitehorn of the Osage 
Tribe. Many Indians have traveled thousands of miles to be painted by 
him. Wilson has done a life-size mural of the famous Chief Sequoyah for 
the Oklahoma State Capitol rotunda. It hangs with three others by him 
depicting Will Rogers, U.S. Senator Robert Kerr, and Indian athlete Jim 
Thorpe. Wilson’s portrait of former House Speaker Carl Albert (1962) 
hung in the National Portrait Gallery before being transferred to the U.S. 
Capitol Speakers’ Gallery. 

In the 1970s Charles Banks Wilson was commissioned to paint a 110- 
foot long mural to hang in the Oklahoma Capitol under his four por¬ 
traits. This new work depicts the state’s history from 1541 to 1900, from 
the period of discovery up to the period of settlement. The project was 
featured in a three-part series in the Orbit magazine, published by the 
Sunday Oklahoman newspaper. 

Wilson, an expert in the culture, ceremonials, and costumes of the 
Oklahoma Indians, has written several standard texts on this subject, 
including Quapaw Agency Indians (1947) and Indians of Eastern Okla¬ 
homa (1964). He designed the First Americans Series of Indian chief 
medallions for Josiah Wedgwood & Sons, Inc., of England. Wilson has 
done watercolors for Ford Times magazine and contributed articles to 
Coronet, Colliers, and the Daily Oklahoman, in addition to This Week. 

He has done the drawings for a number of books, many of which have 
won prizes, such as Treasure Island (1948) and Henry’s Lincoln (1945). 
Wilson also made a color film, Indians in Paint, in 1955 and a television 
documentary, “Names We Never Knew,” in 1974. 



Among Wilson’s awards are the Distinguished Service Cross and the 
first Governor's Award from the state of Oklahoma. He is in both the 
Oklahoma and the cowboy halls of fame and has won additional prizes 
for his art from such institutions as the Art Institute of Chicago, the 
Wichita Art Association, and the National Academy of Design. His work 
maybe seen in such museums as the Metropolitan Museum of Art and 
the Thomas Y. Gilcrase Institution, which owns fifty-five examples. 

Sources 

Wilson, Charles Banks. "An Indian Party.” Collier's Magazine, July 1942. 


122 


Wilson, Charles Banks. "No War Whoops, But. . ..” This Week, January 10, 1943, 
p. 5. 

Sanford, Robert K. “Sure Painter of Indians and Mid-West .” Kansas City Star, 
April 29, 1962, p. 6F. 

Wilson, Charles Banks. "Painting Mural Portraits.” American Artist, 

November 1969. 

De Frange, Ann. "Murals Show ‘Roots of Oklahoma.’” Orbit Magazine, Sunday 
Oklahoman, December 24, 1976, p. 3 ff. 

Who's Who in American Art: 1940-80. 


Fig. 40 

Freedom’s Warrior — 

American Indian 

Charles Banks Wilson, b. 1918 

Lithograph, not dated 
(25.3x34.8 cm) 

Signed on stone, signed in pencil 

"When the call for the first selective 
service registration went out, the bulk 
of the able bodied men of the Navajo 
Indian tribe rode in to Gallup, N.M., 
on their horses, completely equipped 
with food, packs, and rifles. They 
were all ready to start fighting the 
man they call ‘the mustache smeller’ 
that very morning. ” (Charles Banks 
Wilson quoted in the New York 
Herald Tribune, January 10, 1943) 

XX W747 B3 

Fine Prints Collection 

Prints and Photographs Division 

Library’ of Congress 

















Sol Wilson 

(1896-1974) 

Color silkscreen: The Twelfth Day 


Sol Wilson was born in Wilno, Poland (now Vilnyus, Lithuania), on 
August 11, 1896. He first came into contact with printmaking in his 
father’s lithography workshop in Russia, which specialized in printing 
bottle labels and the like. Wilson emigrated to the United States as a 
teenager and studied art in New York at the Cooper Union, the National 
Academy of Design, and the Beaux Arts Institute of Design. He encoun¬ 
tered the teaching of George Bellows at the Ferrer School, and he con 
sidered Bellows and Robert Henri his most important pedagogical influ¬ 
ences. Beginning in 1926 Wilson himself began teaching art at the New 
Haven Y.M.H.A. He subsequently taught at the American Artists’ School 
(1936-40) and the School of Art Studies, New York (1945-49). Many of 
his former pupils have gained national reputations. 

During the 1930s, Wilson worked on government an projects and 
painted murals for the Delmar and Westhampton Beach, New York, post 
offices. He exhibited in a number of group shows, including the New 
York World’s Fair, 1939-40. In 1926 the first of a series of one-man 
shows of his work that continued throughout his entire career was held 
at the Babcock Galleries. 

A winner of many prizes for his art, Sol Wilson submited a silkscreen, 
The Twelfth Day, to the “America in the War” competition, and it took 
third prize in serigraphy. Its subject, survivors washed up on shore, was 
suggested to Wilson by news reports. He was also one of twelve prize¬ 
winners in the exhibition cosponsored by Artists for Victory and Pepsi 
Cola in 1944-45, and he won a purchase prize in the Section of Painting 
and Sculpture of the U.S. Treasury Department-sponsored American Red 
Cross competition in 1942. In 1950 he received a National Institute of 
Arts and Letters (NIAL) award. The chairman of the NIAL committee on 
grants, Leon Kroll, cited Wilson’s “powerful sense of design in both 
form and color” and “emotional expression of a high order.” 

Sol Wilson, who once termed his own style “Expressionist Realism,” 


switched from an emphasis on the human condition to an emphasis on 
nature—primarily landscape and seascape—in the 1950s. He had since 
1927 been spending summers in New England, first at Rockport, Maine, 
near Cape Ann and then, beginning in 1947, at Provincetown, Massachu¬ 
setts, on Cape Cod. Examples from his oeuvre may be seen at such 
museums as the Telfair Academy, the Butler Art Institute, the Whitney 
Museum of American Art, and the Bezalel and Ain Harod museums in 
Israel. 


Sources 

“Exhibit in New York.” Art News 25 (November 20, 1926): 11. 

Salpeter, Harry. “Immigrant’s Rock Bound Coast.” Esquire, February 1944, p. 81. 

Gibbs, Jo. “Sol Wilson Places Sharper Accent on Man.” Art Digest 19 
(March 1, 1945): 15. 

Reese, Albert M. American Prize Prints of the 20th Century. New York: American 
Artists Group, 1949 (pp. 213, 257). 

Salpeter, Harry. “Sol Wilson: An Interview by Harry Salpeter." American Artist 14 
(April 1950): 26-30, 73. 

Genauer, Emily. “Blessing the Fleet.” This Week, New York Herald Tribune, 

June 20, 1953. 

Crotty, Frank. “Cape Cod Close-up.” Worcester Sunday Telegram, 

October 6, 1957, p. 29. 

Crotty, Frank. Provincetown Profiles on Cape Cod, 1958, p. 71. 

Who's Who in American Art. 1940-47, 1953, 1966. 





Fig. 41 

The Twelfth Day 

Sol Wilson (1896-1974) 

Color silkscreen, not dated 
(30.5 x 40.8 cm) 

Signed on screen 


“Thisprint was made during the war 
and the theme was suggested by a 
number of news reports of men hav¬ 
ing been seen at sea on a raft. . . 
many days and nights after their ship 
had been destroyed. On the print the 
broken raft is suggested behind the 
men crawling up the rope. ” (Sol Wil¬ 
son to Albert M. Reese) 


XX W752 B1 

Fine Prints Collection 

Prints and Photographs Division 

Library of Congress 


125 




Lumen Martin Winter 

(1908-1982) 

Lithograph : “Have Anudder on d'House, Doc" 


Lumen Martin Winter was born December 12, 1908, in Elerie, Illinois. 
The son of a mechanical engineer and inventor, he was named after a 
measure of light, the “lumen.” He spent most of his early childhood on 
a ranch in western Kansas near Fort Larned, attending high school in 
Grand Rapids. At age thirteen, he was selling illustrations to American 
Boy magazine and, as a high school student, he worked as a political car¬ 
toonist for the Grand Rapids Herald. 

Winter studied art at the Cleveland School of Art and took classes in 
anatomy from a nearby medical school. He then went to New York, 
where he studied at the Grand Central School, the Beaux Arts Institute 
of Design, and the National Academy of Design, with Ivan Olinsky, 
Hildreth Meiere, and Walter Biggs. He became friendly with Thomas 
Hart Benton and was influenced by his work. 

After the stock market crash in 1929, Winter returned to the Midwest, 
attended junior college for awhile, and worked as a designer for a Cin¬ 
cinnati commercial art firm. But he soon returned to New York to work 
as a cartoonist and magazine and book illustrator. In the early 1930s, he 
studied still life with Arshile Gorky and met muralist Ezra A. Winter, 
whom he assisted on decorations for the Radio City Music Hall. This 
experience inspired Lumen Martin Winter to become a muralist. 

Lumen Martin Winter had his first one-man exhibition at the Hackley 
Art Gallery in Muskegon, Michigan, in 1929. He exhibited his first large 
painting in New York at the Salons of America, held at Rockefeller Cen¬ 
ter, winning honors there. After several more one-man exhibitions in the 
Midwest, he was asked at age twenty-six by the principal of his former 
high school to paint a mural depicting the history of Michigan. The 
resultant work, installed in Union High, Grand Rapids, Michigan, was 
acclaimed in the Literary Digest. 

In the late 1930s and early 1940s, Winter won three commissions for 
mural decorations from the Section of Painting and Sculpture of the U.S. 
Treasury' Department. These were for the post offices in Fremont, Michi¬ 
gan, and Wellston Station, St. Louis, and the Hutchinson, Kansas, Federal 


Building. He painted posters to sell war bonds and served as an artist 
with the U.S. Signal Corps of the Air Force during World War II. 

After the war. Winter’s career as a muralist blossomed. In 1953 he did 
twelve paintings for the City of New York Tercentenary Celebration 
depicting Washington Irving’s Knickerbocker History of Neiv York. At 
this time he began to do some of his murals in mosaic as well as fresco. 
A sixty-foot-wide mosaic bas-relief of the Triumph of Christ was installed 
at the Roman Catholic Church of St. Paul the Apostle in New York in 
1958. Winter supervised the work on this mural in the Pierotti Studios in 
Petrasanti, Italy. His most famous mosaic mural, two stories high and 
twenty feet long, was installed in the 1960s in the lobby of the AFL CIO 
building in Washington, D.C. A detail from this mural, with Thomas 
Carlyle’s motto “Labor is Life,” was reproduced on a three-cent postage 
stamp issued by the U.S. Post Office. 

In addition to the more than twenty painted and mosaic murals to 
Winter’s credit, he received a number of major decorative sculpture 
commissions, including the thirty-foot bronze figure, Our Lady of the 
Thruways, at the crossing of the New York and New England through- 
ways. Right before his death, Winter won a competition to provide an 
outdoor sculpture for the Kansas State Historical Society. 

Lumen Martin Winter continued as an active printmaker to the end, 
creating limited editions for the firm of Jackie Fine Arts in New York 
City. His White Stallion in Moonlight, published commercially, has sold 
over a million copies. 

Winter has had one-man exhibitions at the Galerie Internationale, 
Bonestell Gallery, Center Gallery, and Harry Salpeter Gallery in New 
York City, and at the Brown Gallery in Cincinnati, the Washington 
County Museum in Hagerstown, Maryland, and others. He has partici¬ 
pated in numerous group shows and his work is in such important col¬ 
lections as those at the Vatican, the University of Israel, the White 
House, the U.S. Air Force Academy, and the Santa Fe Trail Museum in 
Larned, Kansas. 



Sources 


"History on a High School’s Walls.” Literary Digest, February' 2, 1935, p. 24. 

Kent, Norman, and Ernest Watson. ‘‘Lumen Martin Winter, Artist of Many Parts.” 
American Artist 14 (May 1950): 35-36 

“Mural for the East Brooklyn Savings Bank.” Pictures on Exhibit 13 ( May 1951): 14. 
“Paulists Bless Vast Sculpture.” New York Times, December 8, 1958. 

Fabri, Ralph. “Lumen Martin Winter.” Today’s Art, 1966. 

Winter, Lumen Martin. “A Mural Painter Discusses Watercolor.” American Artist 
30 (September 1966): 48-49, 70-72. 

Winter, Lumen Martin. “A People’s Art.” Kansas Quarterly, Kansas State Univer¬ 
sity, Manhattan, 1977. 

Richardson, Jim. “For as Long as There Is a Kansas.” Kansas Magazine, 

April 1978. 

Beals, Kathie. “A Romance with Realism.” Gannett Newspapers, Suburbia Today, 
January' 3, 1982. 

Who’s Who in American Art. 1940-80. 


1 W7 
























Appendix 1 


“America in the War” Exhibition List of Prizewinners 


Intaglio 

1st prize: 
2nd prize: 
3rd prize: 
Hon. men.: 


Margot Holt Bostick 
William Sharp 
Donald Vogel 
Will Barnet 


Relief 

1st prize: Hansjelinek 
2nd prize: William Soles 
3rd prize: Letterio Calapai 
Hon. men.: Charles F. Quest 


Planographic 

1st prize: Benton Spruance 
2nd prize: Ira Moskowitz 
3rd prize; Phil Paradise 
Hon. men.: Raphael Soyer 


Stencil 

1st prize: 
2nd prize: 
3rd prize: 
Hon. men. 


Robert Gwathmey 
Leonard Pytlak 
Sol Wilson 
Harry Sternberg 



Appendix 2 


Museums and Galleries Which Showed “America in the War” 

The “America in the War” prints were shown in the following museums and galleries during the month of October 1943- 


BROOKS MEMORIAL 
ART GALLERY 
Memphis, Tennessee 

BUTLER ART INSTITUTE 
Youngstown, Ohio 


CINCINNATI ART MUSEUM 
Cincinnati, Ohio 

CLEVELAND MUSEUM OF ART 
Cleveland, Ohio 

CORCORAN GALLERY OF ART 
Washington, DG. 

CURRIER GALLERY OF ART 
Manchester, New Hampshire 


EVERHART MUSEUM OF 
NATURAL HISTORY, 
SCIENCE AND ART 
Scranton, Pennsylvania 

FINE ARTS GALLERY 
San Diego, California 

FORT WAYNE ART SCHOOL 
AND MUSEUM 
Fort Wayne, Indiana 

KENNEDY GALLERIES 
785 Fifth Avenue 
New York City 

LAYTON ART GALLERY 
Milwaukee, Wisconsin 

MUSEUM OF FINE ARTS 
OF HOUSTON 
Houston, Texas 


CAROLINA ART ASSOCIATION— 
GiBBES MEMORIAL ART GALLERY 
Charleston, South Carolina 


WILLIAM ROCKHILL NELSON 
GALLERY OF ART— 

ATKINS MUSEUM OF FINE ARTS 
Kansas City, Missouri 

NORFOLK MUSEUM OF ARTS AND 

SCIENCES 

Norfolk, Virginia 

PORTLAND ART MUSEUM 
Portland, Oregon 

PRINT CLUB 

Philadelphia, Pennsylvania 

SAN FRANCISCO MUSEUM OF ART 
San Francisco, California 

SANTA BARBARA MUSEUM 
OF ART 

Santa Barbara, California 


SEATTLE ART MUSEUM 
Seattle, Washington 

SMITH COLLEGE MUSEUM OF ART 
Northampton, Massachusetts 

SWOPE ART GALLERY 
Terre Haute, Indiana 

VIRGINIA MUSEUM OF FINE ARTS 
Richmond, Virginia 

WICHITA ART ASSOCIATION 
Wichita, Kansas 

WILMINGTON SOCIETY 
OF THE FINE ARTS 
Wilmington, Delaware 

WISCONSIN UNION 
UNrVERSITY OF WISCONSIN 
Madison, Wisconsin 


130 






























Y * 0 





























